Lives of Alcyone (book)

Lives of Alcyone, or The Lives of Alcyone, was the title given to the books derived from a series of articles published in The Theosophist beginning in April, 1910. The series was entitled "Rents in the Veil of Time," and each article had a subtitle like "The Lives of Alcyone" or "The Lives of Orion."

Alcyone was the "star name" given to young Jiddu Krishnamurti by Charles Webster Leadbeater, author of these articles. Leadbeater used his clairvoyant abilities to examine the past lives of Krishnamurti and others, going back as far as 22,662 BCE. Most of the people purportedly surrounding Alcyone during these past lives had reincarnated to be present with him in his life as Jiddu Krishnamurti. Geographic settings varied from Atlantis to India to South America and other sites of ancient civilizations, which were described graphically. Each past life was presented in the form of a narrative describing personalities, relationships, and deeds. Leadbeater was well aware of the dramatic qualities of his narratives, as he provided a list of "Dramatis Personae" with each story.

Publication of these articles and books brought excitement and energy to the Theosophical Society based in Adyar. but also much criticism. Members plunged into study of karma and reincarnation, but were distracted by the promises of clairvoyant vision. People in other branches of the Theosophical Movement were appalled at this side-trip away from the teachings of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.

The writing of the Lives

Mr. Leadbeater performed all the clairvoyant investigations except for a few by Annie Besant. He dictated them to Ernest Wood and other secretaries. Fritz Kunz assisted with the work late in 1913, when he was en route to the principalship of Ananda College. Clara Codd, Don Fabrizio Ruspoli, Curuppumullage Jinarājadāsa, Dorothy Jinarājadāsa, Bishop Mazel, and others compiled tables and charts, and prepared the articles for publication.

Ernest Wood account

Ernest Wood wrote of his work as secretary to Mr. Leadbeater at the Adyar headquarters of the Theosophical Society, and of assisting him with the clairvoyant investigations:

The way in which he worked differed according to the work he was doing. There were some things apparently that he could do quite easily. Some were more difficult. One of great interest was the investigation into what is called in the U.S. "Lives," or "Rents in the Veil of Time." It came about as the result of a question which I put to him about past lives or intervals between lives, especially of Hindoo people - because there are some things you don't find in other races.

He said he would look into the lives of some people. [Note: He had already investigated the lives of Erato in 1895, of Vega and a group at Alexandria at the time of Hypatia about 1898, of Ursa in 1901, of Orion in 1907-8.] There were some boys living near who used to play about and quite a little party of them who used to come down to the sea after school hours and watch us bathe. Two of them were sons of an old T.S. member, and Mr. Leadbeater asked his permission to look into the past lives of these boys, and that is how it came about that the Lives of Alcyone were published, because one of these boys was Krishnamurti. One evening when meditation was over and I went down with Mr. Leadbeater to see if anything was to be done, he said, "Well, those lives must be done. When shall we begin?" And I said, of course, "Now." There was no other thing to say, and he started that night after meditation and dictated one of these "Lives."... Those "Lives" were done in his own room, his little octagon room down near the river at Adyar. He did 28 of them and Mrs. Besant did two. I sat at the desk and he used to walk round the room, partly to keep himself awake while he was centering on other planes when the physical body was tired; and he went on speaking about what he could see, what he was watching and seeing, and simply wrote that down. He did one of these "Lives" every night.

Mr. Leadbeater would finish the writing of a "Life" and then would say, "Have you any questions to ask, anything that you want to know about it?" I remember that in the first "Life" Mr. Leadbeater dictated - the one in which the Lord Buddha appears, the 28th in the series, and I said, "Well, since you have the Lord Buddha in view, won't you give us one of his sermons?" And he gave the one about the fire. He worked at the rate of about one every night and got the work through very quickly.

Clara Codd account

When she was at Adyar as a young woman in 1910-1911, Clara Codd assisted with the preparation of materials for this book. In her autobiography, So Rich a Life, she gave this account of the work:

[Don Fabrizio Ruspoli] was for quite a time helping Mr. Leadbeater with the preparation of a long series of lives, The Lives of Alcyone, which was the ‘star’ name of Jeddu Krishnamurti. I would help Don Ruspoli draw up enormous tables of the past relationships of more than 250 people who seemed to have been more or less in some sort of relationship to each other all through about thirty-three past lives, going back to about 20,000 B.C., in the days of ancient Atlantis. To distinguish a person from life to life, when of course the name of the personality altered, Mr. Leadbeater, who had been a great student of astronomy at one time, gave most of them the names of stars. There was generally some private clue to his method of bestowing these names. For instance, he found me and called me ‘Pisces’ because my surname is Codd. The connection is obvious. Then an extremely stout Indian received the name of ‘Colossus’.

Don Ruspoli and I drew out these charts, putting a male incarnation in red ink and a female incarnation in black…

‘The Lives’ stimulated much interest. One of Don Fabrizio’s favourite jokes was to tell people: “Hush! don’t say a word, but I have three wives on the compound.” Wives of past lives, of course, he meant.

Once at a meeting in Bradford, England, a big, burly farmer asked me if I had ever met anyone I had been married to in past lives.

“Yes,” I replied, “many of them, but I don’t feel like getting married to any of them this time! ”

There were some people at Adyar whom, for the moment, C.W.L. had not found in that particular past. So these members made up a series of lives for themselves, and gave themselves names such as Cyclops. They also composed a poem which they set to music, the chorus of which went like this:

‘In the Lives! In the Lives!

We’ve had all sorts of husbands and wives.

In spite of all irk

We were devils for work.

In the Lives! In the Lives!’

Someone sang this at one of Mr. [Albert] Schwarz’s musical afternoons, and Mr. Leadbeater had a good laugh.

It may interest some people to know how this investigation of past lives may be done. Let me try to put it simply. Different orders or degrees of matter exist one within the other, permeating and pervading all space. With each degree of matter, time and space valuations are different. Every deed, every word, every thought, every impulse and desire, sent out from that dynamic centre of consciousness which is the individual, express themselves as vibratory rhythms at different levels of matter. These set up synchronous rhythms in the subtler planes. Finally they reach the primeval form of matter called by Hindu philosophers the ’’Akasha’’. There they register themselves permanently and are called the Akashic Records, held to be under the care of the ’’Lipika’’, the recorders, deities of unfathomable height and power. We have the same idea in Christianity in the so-called Book of Life, and the Recording Angel who keeps it. In that living, self-written record, the highly trained seer can trace the pathway of the immortal ego through many lives or incarnations in physical bodies. But such clairvoyance is extremely rare. It should not be confused with the pictures so often seen in the astral light, which may, or may not, refer to the person near whom they appear.

Star names of some prominent Theosophists

Altogether 281 lives were examined and identified by "star names." These are some names that were revealed as associated with the people of Leadbeater's era.

• Alastor - Alexander Fullerton
• Alcyone - Jiddu Krishnamurti
• Arcor - Miss A. J. Willson
• Bee - Esther Bright
• Erato - John Varley
• Fides - George S. Arundale
• Helios - Marie Russak Hotchener
• Herakles - Annie Besant

• Mizar - Jiddu Nityananda
• Phocea - William Quan Judge
• Pisces - Clara Codd
• Selene - Curuppumullage Jinarājadāsa
• Sirius - Charles Webster Leadbeater
• Sita - Dorothy Jinarājadāsa
• Ulysses - Henry Steel Olcott
• Vajra - Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

Reactions to the "Lives"

"Rents in the Veil of Time" was received with excitement by English-speaking Theosophists in the Adyar Theosophical Society. Articles were reprinted in The Theosophic Messenger and adapted for children by "Betelgeuse" in the 1913-1914 series of The American Theosophist. The significance of the "Lives of Alcyone" increased dramatically when the World Teacher movement arose early in 1911. When Annie Besant arrived in London with Krishnamurti on May 5, 1911, an English newspaper covered the event, eagerly anticipating "Alcyone."

The "lives" were also treated as instructional: "The Lives of Erato (No. 11) in Rents in the Veil of Time show how, in an incarnation, diligence and honesty may neutralize misfortunes." The Karma and Reincarnation League latched onto this material as a resource for "advanced study." Patterns were teased out by close reading: "In looking over the lives of various egos as disclosed by clairvoyant investigation and appearing in Rents in the Veil of Time, it seems that the incarnations run in alternate series of several lives in one sex and then several in another."

Adyar Theosophists speculated about the current-life personalities of the "star names." A magazine review hinted that "Ulysses" in the November, 1917 issue of The Theosophist was Henry Steel Olcott. Each time a name was revealed, people reread the previous "lives" to add context to the stories; so-and-so was married to so-and-so! College student Fritz Kunz frequently commented on the star names in his letters to his sisters. He wrote in a 1910 letter to Alma:

I said Vega for Mrs. Holbrook although the description you mention of Vesta certainly fits her... There is no doubt that Sirius is Mr. Leadbeater in my mind, and I don't care what Warrington said!

That implies that even A. P. Warrington was caught up in the speculation. In 1911, Fritz wrote:

My only evidence that Orion is Basil [Hodgson-Smith] is that he shows the characteristics of that character, and this life carries out the idea to a certain extent. I have a very powerful bit of inductive evidence. The only dates calculated are those of Mr. Leadbeater, Orion, Alcyone and a certain J.V. The close relation of Orion and Sirius as these dates show carry out what I know to have been their close relation in the past.

Some "named" members were very open about their past-life identity. Marie Russak Hotchener signed articles and letters with her moniker "Helios." Having a "star name" became a badge of honor - a symbol of in-group status, even though that was never Leadbeater's intention. Envy and jealousy arose. Members whose lives had not been occultly investigated would ask Leadbeater to "read" their Akashic records, and to tell where they fit into the tables and charts. Finally he declined to pursue any more past-life researches.

Comments by Hugh Shearman

Hugh Shearman wrote of the Lives:

When Bishop Leadbeater gave accounts of the past lives of any of his colleagues and acquaintances, what he decribed often seemed in some way to fit the individual whom one knew in this life.

Some will hold that this as evidence of objective truth in what Bishop Leadbeater described,others that what he wrote embodied at least a sound intuition.

The case of Clara Codd is a good example. Amusingly, Bishop Leadbeater allotted to her, as a reinarnating ego, the name of the constellation Pisces, the Fishes, making play of the fact that a cod is a kind of fish. Anybody who cares to trace the lives of Pisces, in the extensive tables given in The Lives of Alcyone,who find that the character with that name always had a different marriage partner in every life. Others might return to former partners, but Pisces always turned each time adventurously to somebody new.

This view of her past way of choice which the lives offer serves admirably to express and symbolize something that was very deep in Clara Codd's nature. She was nobody's "twin soul".

Online version

• Lives of Alcyone in three parts at Anandgholap.net

Online resources

Articles

• Clairvoyant Investigations by C.W. Leadbeater and The Lives of Alcyone by Ernest Wood