Review: The Perfume of Egypt...

LEADBEATER, C.W., The Perfume of Egypt, The Theosophist Office, Adyar, Madras, India, 1912.

Second edition: octavo; hardcover, with illustrated upper board; 306pp. (with 6pp. of adverts) with an illustrated half-title page. Very slightly rolled; boards rubbed with some inkstains; corners somewhat bumped; spine sunned and extremities softened; text block edges lightly spotted; flyleaf torn out; previous owner’s pencil inscription to the half-title and ink inscription to the title page; scattered light foxing throughout. Lacks dustwrapper. Very good.

It’s an interesting exercise to compare two works written by devotees of a spurious faith. In my last post it was Aleister Crowley, a pernicious little oik, who invented his own ‘belief system’ and pushed it mercilessly in order to grab all of the drugs, notoriety and ass he could wrap his slimy mitts around; today, it’s the work of Charles Webster Leadbeater, a staunch partisan of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, and a fairly prolific writer of Theosophical texts. This – in order to compare it with Crowley’s ‘offering’ – is also a collection of short stories with a supernatural bent, albeit with Theosophical axes grinding in the background.

La Blavatsky – let me be clear – is no more or less a snake-oil salesman than Crowley. The codswallop that she shovelled during her lifetime stank no more or less than the crap Crowley dished out. The difference between the two of them is simply this: those around La Blavatsky took the essence of the rubbish she peddled and spun from it a belief system that simmered down to a philosophy, and then reduced further to an alternative lifestyle option. Once she was dead, the followers took a long hard look at themselves and stepped sideways, away from ridicule and condemnation. Theosophy is still practised today, but it is slowly going the way of other philosophical dodos and will most likely cease to be in a generation or so.

Rudolf Steiner enacted the biggest schism away from Theosophy. He dived into the faith headfirst in his early days and drank deep of the Kool-Aid; later, the scales fell from his eyes and he broke away, forming a splinter sect called Anthroposophy. His work – stripped of Blavatsky’s hoo-ha – lives on in Steiner Schools and other institutions across the planet.

Less lucky was Krishnamurti. This fellow probably felt fortunate at having been selected as Blavatsky’s “Chosen One”; after all, he grew up in a country where reincarnation was a given so why not? Prolonged exposure to La Blavatsky and her shenanigans must have left him feeling uneasy though: it became obvious to him that she was less a fakir than a faker, and he began to back-pedal furiously, parleying his ‘Theosophical godhead’ into something less over-the-top. His books on the meditative life and contemplative existence are worth reading – after all, he was wise enough to see where Blavatsky’s ship was headed and to jump off in time, so he must have known a thing or two.

Not so lucky were Blavatsky’s other disciples. Annie Besant clung desperately to the spurious truths of Isis Unveiled and kept the flag flying well after the hype had dwindled and the Spiritualist age had passed into a non-event. She wrote many erudite books on the nature of belief – albeit with a theosophical bent – chief amongst them Mysticism, which is still considered a cornerstone publication on the subject. Along with her was C.W. Leadbeater, whose publications for the cult at Adyar includes volumes one and two of The Inner Life and The Hidden Side of Things, among many other titles.

It’s not too much of a stretch to think that this book was probably something of a money-spinner for the Theosophists. For starters, it’s about ghosts and such-like supernaturality; in 1912, these collections were all the rage thanks to Charles Dickens and the scribblings of M.R. James. Add to the internal content, the Egyptian-style design of the front cover and this volume literally has ‘spooky’ written all over it. The coffers at Adyar must have been overflowing!

The stories in this book have a homey feel to them. Leadbeater introduces them as tales which he had heard personally and which he had gone to great lengths to obtain permission to reproduce. In some instances, he had been asked to change the names of those involved and in one, he confesses that the original teller of the story died before such permission was granted and – despite the fact that we would all certainly know the person in question and thereby accept the story’s authenticity - prefers, for honour’s sake, to retain a veil of anonymity. Some of the stories are his own experiences and one is a ghost story which he heard La Blavatsky tell one evening and which he introduces as his own poor attempt to retail her narrative. The final story is more of a novella, told in chapters and set in the back jungles of an anarchic South America: the narrator is unidentified and the verifiable details of the tale are sketchy at best; however, as an exercise in pulp fiction it has all the elements required for a rollicking yarn.

The stories run the gamut of post-death apparitions, from spooks with unfinished business  to vengeful spirits out for blood. Each one has its share of suspense and revelation and each one resolves nicely. Leadbeater takes pains to analyse each episode from a theosophic viewpoint, arguing in favour of astral projections, thought forms and karmic burdens, but this wrapping up is never intrusive or detrimental to the preceding narrative. His delivery is occasionally a little wide-eyed and ingenuous (especially when the story involves himself) but, since we’re here for the ghosts to start with, rounding out the meal with a side order of Spirituality is hardly an annoyance.

This is what Crowley loses sight of with his stories – the entertainment factor. While Leadbeater talks from a Theosophical stance, fundamentally he’s here to engage and divert us; Crowley’s every pen-scratch on a piece of paper is an exercise in self-promotion and the tearing-down of those whom he despises. Reading an extract from The Perfume of Egypt before bedtime will leave you entertained and ready for a good night’s sleep; reading an extract from The Drug & Other Stories will make you want to get up and have a hot shower with a wire brush. I know which one I’d choose!

Three-and-a-half Tentacled Horrors from me.