Sexuality, Magic and Perversion (22 page)

So convincing was the journalism of Stokes and Fortune, and at first sight, so damning the evidence against Leadbeater, that to this day many occultists remain convinced that he and his associates were “black magicians who obtained occult power by vampirising young boys”.
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In the circumstances I think it well worth while to examine the whole relationship between Leadbeater and these same boys, the alleged victims of his activities.

Charles Webster Leadbeater was born in 1847 of English expatriate parents. He spent most of his early years in South America and seems to have led an extremely exciting life, on one occasion being kidnapped and almost killed by Indians. In 1879, after his return to England, he was ordained as an Anglican priest and took up a curacy in Hampshire. At this early stage of his life he already seems to have been preoccupied with what were to remain his two major interests until his death over fifty years later—the supernatural and young boys. He ran the Church choir, superintended the Sunday School, coached backward boys, and, according to his own account, experienced many uncanny events in the course of his experiments with mesmerism.

In 1885, while still a curate of the Church of England, he met Madame Blavatsky and was converted by her to Theosophy, a creed to which he had felt attracted since reading A. P. Sinnet’s sensational book
The Occult World
some years before. The Theosophical Society, of which Leadbeater was now a member, had been founded at New York in 1875 by Madame Blavatsky, Colonel H. S. Olcott, William Q. Judge and others. Nominally, it was a learned society, its objects being: (1) to form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity; (2) to encourage the study of comparative religion, philosophy, and science; (3) to investigate the unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in man. In reality, however, it was a syncretistic religious body teaching
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a peculiar hodge-podge of traditional western occultism—
mostly lifted by Madame Blavatsky, without acknowledgement, from the published writings of such nineteenth-century magicians as Eliphas Levi, Albert Pike and Kenneth MacKenzie
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—and Southern Buddhism.

Afire with missionary zeal for his new-found faith, and filled with an enthusiasm for all things oriental, Leadbeater spent much of the next eight years in India and Ceylon. As usual, he devoted a good deal of attention to the problems of youth, and succeeded in acquiring a young (male) Sinhalese protégé named Jinarajadasa who accompanied him on his return to Europe in 1893. From that year onwards Leadbeater began to assume some prominence in the Theosophical movement, writing more and more articles for its magazines describing his clairvoyant experiences in pamphlets, and, in August 1895, becoming Assistant Secretary of the European Section of the Theosophical Society. By 1900 Leadbeater’s reputation as a writer, lecturer and clairvoyant, had spread to North America, and in the autumn of that year he undertook a four-month long lecture-tour of the United States. The American Theosophists
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were enchanted by his personality, and so successful was his tour that, in 1902, he was invited back, this time for a full two years of visits and lecture-tours. No doubt his close friendship with Annie Besant, the leading Theosophist since the death of Blavatsky, stood him in good stead with the Americans.

Ever since Leadbeater had, in 1898, taken over the Lotus Circle, a London club for the children of Theosophical parents, and begun to transform it into the international organisation it ultimately became, he had enjoyed a reputation as Theosophy’s own expert on education and the life of the child. As a consequence of this he was, on his second visit to North America, accompanied throughout by Basil Hodgson-Smith, the young son of the President of the Harrogate Lodge of the Theosophical Society and, for the seven months of his lecture-tour of the West, by Douglas Pettit, a fourteen-year-old American, the physically and mentally handicapped son of Theosophical parents.

When Douglas returned to his parents’ home at the end of the tour it became clear that his marked admiration for Leadbeater had been mysteriously transformed into an even stronger dislike for the man and all his doings. When Mrs. Pettit first tried to question her son on this change in his feelings she was at first met by silence and seeming incomprehension. Some months later, after rumours about Leadbeater’s sexual morality had reached her from England—for years G. R. S. Mead and other English Theosophists had been suspicious of the nature of the relationship between Leadbeater and some of his young pupils— she again questioned Douglas, this time much more persistently, and this time he told her his story in full. He alleged that on his first night alone with his temporary tutor, for such was Leadbeater’s supposed office, he had been taken into his bed and taught the practice of mutual masturbation. Acts of this nature, claimed Douglas, had continued intermittently throughout the entire period of the Western tour.

Mrs. Pettit was deeply disturbed by this confession, and, in search of advice, took the story to her friend Helen Dennis, like herself both an ardent Theosophist and a native of Chicago. I have no doubt that Mrs. Dennis listened to her friend’s tale with a more than ordinary concern— for she had noticed that her own son, Robin, had developed a dislike of Leadbeater since a brief stay with him in Toronto. Inevitably, Robin was also questioned; he, too, broke down and told a similar story of mutual masturbation, although, in his case, the incident seems to have been an isolated one. The most damaging allegation made by Robin was that the practice had been taught him under the guise of religion. “Somehow”, he told his mother, “he made me believe it was Theosophical.”

Mrs. Dennis was a figure of some importance in the Theosophical Society, for she had held the position of Corresponding Secretary of the Esoteric Section in America,
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and, with the help of her assistant, Dr. Elizabeth Chichester, she used her position to launch a campaign against Leadbeater. By the beginning of 1906 such leading American Theosophists as Frank Knothe, President of the New York Lodge, and Alexander Fullerton, a former Episcopalian clergyman, had been
informed of the nature of the charges that had been made by the boys, and had set up an informal committee to investigate them.

In January 1906 Mrs. B. Dennis wrote to Anne Besant formally informing her of the allegations made against her friend. At the same time Fullerton
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wrote a similar letter to Leadbeater himself.

Leadbeater’s defence was a complex one, and surprisingly enough, did not involve a complete denial of the truth of the boys’ accusations. He claimed that there had only been one incident with Douglas, and that this solitary episode had taken place after the boy had approached him for help in dealing with the strange feelings that he had been experiencing since the onset of puberty. As far as Robin was concerned, said Leadbeater, the lad had been corrupted by another youth, a certain Nevers, and all that he, Leadbeater, had done was to give the boy some useful advice on diet and to urge him to use vigorous exercise as a means of suppressing unwanted sexual desires. Leadbeater did admit, however, that he had subsequently advised Robin to use “regular discharges” (i.e. masturbation) as a means of reducing sexual tension.

Although this defence was feeble enough, there did, at first, seem to be some chance of its being successful; after all, the boys’ evidence was uncorroborated and, in spite of the rumours that had been circulated in certain quarters, most of the members of the Theosophical Society still regarded Leadbeater as a man of unblemished reputation. Leadbeater’s hopes of being believed were, however, sharply diminished with the discovery of documentary evidence against him in the shape of a letter from him to Robin. This letter had been found in the Toronto house at which the pair had stayed, and most of it was harmless enough, a rather meandering discourse on the subject of astral travel; but in the middle of the letter came a passage in cipher.
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This passage had obvious auto-erotic implications and, when decoded, read: “If it comes without help he needs rubbing more often. But not too often, or he will not come
well. Does this happen when you are asleep; tell me fully. Glad sensation is so pleasant. Thousand kisses darling.”

At this stage of events Colonel Olcott, the venerated President-Founder of the Society, set his famous “roving eye’
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to work, made a preliminary examination of the evidence, and established a committee of investigation. After some deliberation this committee, consisting of the entire Executive Committee of the British Section together with some French and American representatives, summoned Leadbeater to appear before it in London. To the surprise of some of his opponents the accused man obeyed the summons and what has sometimes been called “the trial” took place on May 16th, 1906.

In his evidence to the committee Leadbeater put forward the extraordinary claim that his clairvoyant examination of children’s auras enabled him to know when these same children were in sexual difficulties or in need of advice! Accordingly, so he said, he had advised not only Douglas and Robin, but several other boys as well, to engage in masturbation. This bold front collapsed when, under Olcott’s questioning, Leadbeater broke down badly and admitted that there had been, on occasion, a certain amount of what he termed “indicative action”, and also that his advice had not been limited to boys who had already reached the age of puberty. Leadbeater had already voluntarily offered his resignation from the Theosophical Society, and, after hearing these damaging confessions, the committee decided, by a majority vote, to accept it.

For a time Leadbeater retired to the isolation of Jersey, occupying his time with much letter writing, justifying the course of conduct he had followed and alleging that his opponents were under the influence of “Black Magicians”.

Nine months later, on February 17th, 1907, the situation was transformed by the death, following a month-long coma, of Colonel
Olcott. His nominated successor was Annie Besant who, even before her formal election to the Presidency in the following June, had been engaged in planning the gradual rehabilitation of her old friend Lead-beater. To help the attainment of this end she recruited the services of Dr. Weller Van Hook, a well-known American Theosophist, and persuaded him to write three open letters for circulation to the general membership of the Society. In these letters Van Hook not only claimed that the enemies of Leadbeater were also enemies “of the Masters and of the future religion of the World”, but went to the lengths of stating that the Master Koot Hoomi had appeared to him and informed him that Leadbeater’s sexual teachings were correct and in accordance with occult principles.
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The white-washing operation was successful, and by the beginning of 1909 Leadbeater was, to all intents and purposes, back in the Society, although it was not until the following year that this was publicly acknowledged by the Theosophical press. For a time all seemed well, but only three years later new allegations concerning Leadbeater’s morality led to a fresh upheaval in the Theosophical ranks. This time there was even greater publicity, for the charges and counter charges were no longer confined to the comparative privacy of internal Theosophical journals and committees, but were openly made in the Courts of both India and England. The allegations were, in fact, a component part of the First Act of the tragi-comedy of Annie Besant’s attempt to promote an Indian youth, J. Krishnamurti, as Christ returned to Earth.

For some years Theosophists in general, and Annie Besant in particular, had been forecasting a new manifestation of the Christ, an event which they originally seem to have anticipated taking place
circa
1950. Later there was a considerable shortening of the time-scale, and for a brief period Annie Besant hoped that Dr. Van Hook’s son, Hubert, born in 1896, might be the vehicle through which the “World Teacher” would, in due course, manifest himself; but by the beginning
of 1910 both she and Leadbeater were convinced that Krishnamurti was the chosen vessel.
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Krishnamurti was the son of Narayaniah, a devout Theosophist of the Brahmin caste, who had, in 1908, retired from a junior clerkship in the Civil Service and made his home in a small cottage just outside the main compound of the Theosophical headquarters at Adyar, Madras. It was not long before Leadbeater’s attention was drawn to Krishnamurti and his younger brother Nityananda—according to his own account by the remarkable size and colour of their astral auras, according to another, and I think more likely, story by the sight of the boys bathing. One thing, at any rate, is clear enough; either the astral or physical body of Krishnamurti made such an impact upon Lead-beater that it converted him to the belief that here, and here alone, was the chosen vehicle of the Master of Masters. By the end of 1909 Narayaniah had been persuaded to let the boys move from their home into a suite adjacent to Leadbeater’s own quarters and later, on February 10th, 1910, he signed a letter, drafted by the Vice-President of the Theosophical Society, giving Annie Besant the custody of the boys. He came to bitterly regret this guardianship when, early in 1911, the
Antiseptic
, a local medical journal, published an article raking up all the old scandals about Leadbeater. This article
Psychopathia Sexualis in a Mahatma
went so far as to suggest that in a previous incarnation Leadbeater had been “Onan the son of Guda and Sua and grandson of Israel”.
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Over the next eighteen months Narayaniah’s anxieties
increased until, on October 24th, 1912, he filed a suit for the recovery of the children. His feelings at the time are best conveyed by his own written statement which I reproduce in full.