Carl Henrik Andreas Bjerregaard

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All who seek the roots of life dig in solitude for them.  - C.H.A. Bjerregaard

C.H.A. Bjerregaard

Carl Henrik Andreas (C.H.A.) Bjerregaard (1845-1922) was born in Denmark in 1845. Graduating from the University of Copenhagen in 1863, he went on to become a professor of botany. In 1873 he came to America and in 1879 became Librarian at the Astor Library, which later merged with the Lenox Library to form the Reference Division of the New York Public Library, eventually becoming Chief of its Main Reading Room. His interest in the spiritual life can be seen in the books and articles he wrote. This may explain the extensive collection of theosophical material at the New York Public Library.

Bjerregaard was a longtime student of mysticism and oriental thought, having studied European scholarship on the topic prior to his immigrating, and Transcendentalism and New Thought afterward. He had become affiliated with the New York Theosophical branch by early 1886 and began giving the group several lectures on various esoteric topics. Bjerregaard also wrote for Judge's new journal, The Path, a series of articles on Sufism, which ran from May through October of 1886.

Biography

A one-time spy for the Danish military, Carl H. A. Bjerregaard (1845–1922) hastily left Denmark in 1873, a twenty-eight-year-old lieutenant absent without leave, and headed for New York. In the United States Bjerregaard started a new life, first as a factory worker in New Jersey, and then through employment at the Astor Library (soon to form the core of the New York Public Library). In Denmark he had briefly helped curate a natural history museum, so his joining the library staff in 1879 to classify books and recatalog them was not wholly out of character. Soon his military service faded into the past; he spent the rest of his career with the New York Public, eventually heading up the main reading room. That was only his day job, though. In his spare time, with all the library’s resources at his fingertips, Bjerregaard fashioned himself into a philosopher, artist, and mystic.

By the 1890s, he was lecturing widely on mysticism, nature worship, and kindred topics. “I address you as Pilgrims of the Infinite,” Bjerregaard told an audience in Chicago in 1896, “for you are pilgrims; I can see that on your faces. You are not pilgrims either from or to the Infinite, but you are of the Infinite. From and to indicate space and time relations, but in the Infinite we recognize neither time nor space; there is no to-day and to-morrow; no here and no there. Eternity is no farther off from the Mystic, than the moment in which he speaks. You are Pilgrims OF the Infinite.” Bjerregaard’s summons to explore the “Mystic Life” was heady stuff. It was, among other things, an affirmation of the supreme freedom of spiritual aspirants to seek the truth for themselves and within themselves. The call seemed to resound everywhere: Bible passages, Taoist sayings, pine trees and cones, Jewish Kabbalah, Zoroastrian fire imagery, yoga, Sufi poetry, American Transcendentalism, and the Christian mythology of the Holy Grail.

Bjerregaard’s spirituality, like the faith of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), was especially in synchrony with the American lecture circuit. Bjerregaard’s favorite place to speak was Greenacre, the summer community that the visionary Sarah Farmer (1847–1916) founded in Eliot, Maine, in 1894. He saw Farmer’s experiment as a realization of his ideas about a universal mysticism and was lavish in his praise of its design. When he gave personal examples of his own exalted experiences, they almost always circled back to Greenacre, whether to a sunrise worship service led by the Zoroastrian Jehanghier Cola or to barefoot walks on the dew-drenched grass. “Greenacre is a revelation,” Bjerregaard remarked. “When you rise from the cool waves of the Piscataqua [River], you rise out of the quiet place of your own soul.” As a lecturer, Bjerregaard believed in presentations that were personal and experiential; like Emerson, he did not want to offer secondhand news or disinterested scholarship. Make lecturers, he said, “give their own experiences and not something they have read in books and only poorly digested.... In soul life no abstract teachings are worth much.”

Obituary

C.H.A. BJERREGAARD, LIBRARIAN, DIES AT 76

Authority and Writer on Mysticism Taught Himself Painting at Age of 70.

Carl Henry Andrew Bjerregaard, chief of the reading room of the New York Public Library and an authority on mysticism, died yesterday morning at his residence, 541 West 124th Street, in his 77th year. He had been conected [sic] with the public libraries of this city since he first found employment with the old Astor library in 1879.

Born in the town of Frederica, Denmark, the feudal seat of his Viking ancestors, Bjerregaard graduated from the University of Copenhagen in 1863 and from the Military Academy of Denmark in 1866, serving five years in the Danish Army. After a brief period with the Danish Legation at St. Petersburg he came to this country for political reasons in 1873. A time of hardship followed until his scholarly attainments gained him a permanent position.

In addition to lecturing on mysticism and various Oriental beliefs, the [sic] wrote many books on such subjects as "Mysticism and Nature Worship," "Sufi Interpretation of Omar Khayyam and Fitzgerald" and "The Great Mother," the last treating the connection between the mystic passion and nature worship. In accordance with his view that youth is preserved by the adoption of a new productive activity, he taught himself painting at the age of 70 and produced several hundred sketches and pictures in oil and water color, drawing entirely from memory, some of the scenes beheld only in his dreams.

Citation in The Secret Doctrine

In The Secret Doctrine, volume 1, p. 630, HPB quotes “the opinion of this learned and thoughtful theosophist, Mr. C. H. A. Bjerregaard,” on the Monad, from his “excellent paper on ‘The Elementals, the Elementary Spirits, and the relationship between them and Human Beings,’” read by him at the Theosophical Society in New York, and printed in The Path, Jan. and Feb. 1887: Every monad is a living mirror of the universe, within its own sphere. And mark this, for upon it depends the power possessed by these monads, and upon it depends the work they can do for us: in mirroring the world, the monads are not mere passive reflective agents, but spontaneously self-active; they produce the images spontaneously, as the soul does a dream. In every monad, therefore, the adept may read everything, even the future. Every monad or Elemental is a looking-glass that can speak.

Relationship to Theosophy

In his Autobiography. Dictated at Deer Isle, Maine, June 1912. Bjerregaard states:

My relationship to Theosophy and Orientalism is something like the following. I am not a theosophist and never shall be, if by that word is understood a follower of Blavatsky or any of the various forms which she originated. I will admit that she was a clever, intellectual woman and I will give her full credit for her smart attempt to restore Oriental doctrines of various kinds, particularly her endeavor to re-construct the cosmic seven-fold plan of existence. I admit that I do not understand it but I can see enough in it to marvel at the truths it probably contains. I do not care whether she wrote the “Isis Unveiled” or how much help she had in writing her book on “The Secret Doctrine.” I stand in no personal relationship to her, for or against, or to any of her doctrinal followers. To say the least, I must admit that she was a clever woman, and judging from the facts, I must admit that Theosophy has been the cause of the introduction of a great deal that is sound teaching, into the modern current notions. At the same time, I will also say that much harm has come by it, not inherent in the doctrine, but from the immature student's relationship to it. I think that Theosophy has contributed two fundamental thoughts to modern thinking which are of essential value, namely: the doctrine of Karma and Reincarnation.... Among theosophists I have found many honest and sincere people, men and women, who have been earnest students and who have been helped in their spiritual growth by Theosophy. While I am no follower of Blavatsky, I am perhaps a theosophist after all. I sympathize much with the teachings found in the Upanishads, in Plotinus and in Jacob Bohme, three forms of philosophical thought which must correctly be called theosophic, but I am not a follower of either of the three forms in any sense or manner whatsoever. In my own theosophy as in the rest of my mystic studies, I have been compelled to follow my own road. May be to my harm, may be to my good; here, as elsewhere, I have had to follow the truth of my existence.

Writings/Lectures

The Inner Life and the Tao-Teh-King

The Union Index of Theosophical Periodicals lists 24 articles by or about Bjerregaard.

His books include:

• Lectures on Mysticism and Talks on Kindred Subjects. Chicago: Corbitt & Burnham, 1896.

Lectures on Mysticism and Nature Worship. Chicago: M.R. Kent, 1897. Sufi Interpretations of The Quatrains of Omar Khayyam and Fitzgerald. New York: J.F. Taylor & Co., 1902. Sufi Interpretations of The Quatrains of Omar Khayyam and Fitzgerald. Hafiz Edition. Expanded edition, published in 169 copies. Inner Life: A Lecture Before the Theosophical Society. New York: Theosophical Publishing Co., 1909. Jesus: A Poet, Prophet, Mystic, and Man of Freedom. Easton: The Chemical Publishing Company, no date [c. 1912]. The Inner Life and the Tao-Teh-King. The Theosophical Publishing Co. of New York, 1912. The Great Mother: A Gospel of the Eternally-Feminine. New York: The Inner-Life Publishing Co., 1913. Sufism: Omar Khayyam and E. Fitzgerald. London: Sufi Publishing Society, 1915.

Lectures on mysticism and nature worship, 1896 and 1897; Sufi interpretations of the quatrains of Omar Khayyam and Fitzgerald, 1902; Jesus: a poet, prophet, mystic and man of freedom, 1912; The inner life and the Tao-teh-king, 1912; The great mother, a gospel of the eternally-feminine; occult and scientific studies and experiences in the sacred and secret life, 1913; Sufism: Omar Khayyam and E. Fitzgerald, 1915.

C.H.A. Bjerregaard’s articles in The Path began with a six part series on “Sufism,” starting in the May 1886 issue, and followed by “The Elementals, the Elementary Spirits, and the Relationship between them and human beings,” a paper read before the Aryan T.S. of New York, Dec. 14, 1886, and published in The Path, Jan. and Feb. 1887.

An extensive Bibliography of C.H.A. Bjerregaard [link is to an English translation, courtesy of the author] is included in the biography by Lars Rasmussen, C.H.A. Bjerregaard og Det Indre Liv: en Dansk Mystiker i New York [C.H.A. Bjerregaard and the Inner Life: a Danish Mystic in New York]. This is the first book ever devoted to the life and work of the philosopher C.H.A. Bjerregaard (1845-1922). The first part of the book tells of his growing up in Jutland, Denmark, recounts his paranormal experiences as a young man, his participation in the Danish-German war of 1864, and his career in the Danish army up to his emigration to New York in 1873. It tells the amazing story of how he worked his way up from humble beginnings as a factory worker in New Jersey to a respected position as a librarian at the New York Public Library. The second part of the book is a critical presentation of his lectures and articles on theosophical subjects plus books on Daoism, Sufism and mythology. The book is written in Danish, but contains extensive quotations in English from Mr. Bjerregaard's writings, including his unpublished autobigraphy.