Paschal Beverly Randolph

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Paschal Beverly Randolph
Born(1825-10-08)October 8, 1825
New York City, U.S.
Died(1875-07-29)July 29, 1875 (aged 49)
Toledo, Ohio, U.S.
Spouse(s)Mary Jane Randolph (m. 1850; div. 1864)
Kate Corson (?–1875)

Paschal Beverly Randolph (October 8, 1825 – July 29, 1875) was an American medical doctor,

Rosicrucian
order in the United States.

Early life

Born in New York City,[1] Randolph grew up in New York City and was baptized at the Church of the Transfiguration, Episcopal (Manhattan).[2] He was a free black man, a descendant of William Randolph. His father was a nephew of John Randolph of Roanoke and his mother was Flora Beverly, whom he later described as being of mixed English, French, German, Native American and African ancestry.[3] His mother died when he was young, leaving him homeless and penniless; he ran away to sea in order to support himself. From his adolescence through to the age of twenty, he worked as a sailor.[1]

As a teen and young man, Randolph traveled widely, due to his work aboard sailing vessels. He journeyed to England, through Europe, and as far east as

Paris, France
.

Career

Returning to New York City in September 1855, after "a long tour in Europe and Africa," he gave a public lecture to African Americans on the subject of emigrating to India. Randolph believed that "the Negro is destined to extinction" in the United States.[4]

After leaving the sea, Randolph embarked upon a public career as a lecturer and writer. By his mid-twenties, he regularly appeared on stage as a

trance medium and advertised his services as a spiritual practitioner in magazines associated with Spiritualism. Like many Spiritualists of his era, he lectured in favor of the abolition of slavery
; after emancipation, he taught literacy to freed slaves in New Orleans.

In addition to his work as a

occultism. He wrote more than fifty works on magic and medicine, established an independent publishing company, and was an avid promoter of birth control
during a time when it was largely against the law to mention this topic.

Having long used the pseudonym "The Rosicrucian" for his Spiritualist and occult writings, Randolph eventually founded the

Rosicrucian organization in the United States. This group, still in existence, today avoids mention of Randolph's interest in sex magic, but his magico-sexual theories and techniques formed the basis of much of the teachings of another occult fraternity, the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, although it is not clear that Randolph himself was ever personally associated with the Brotherhood.[5]

Belief and teaching

Randolph described himself as a

Rosicrucian.[6] He had worked "largely alone", producing "his own synthesis" of "esoteric teachings".[6]

Sex and gender

The manner in which Randolph incorporated sex into his occult system was considered uncharacteristically bold for the period in which he lived.[6] He believed that sex magic could lead to increased health, love, the empowerment of women, and children of superior intelligence. In his more underground publications, he wrote that church and marriage were oppressive forces that could be overthrown with the power of love in a world-wide revolution.[7]

Randolph held an unusually expansive view of gender identity, considering earthly gender to be "provisional," and referring to God as both male and female.[7] In a book on love he wrote:

I believe in love, all the way through. And while I live will help every man, woman, and the betweenities to win, obtain, intensify, deepen, purify, strengthen and keep it, and I will help all others to do the same. There! That’s me! I mean it![7]

In the spirit world that Randolph wrote of in elaborate detail, human bodies are filled with electric current instead of blood and saliva. People move by magnetism. They have art, schools, and cities as terrestrial humans do, but their lives are more enjoyable and sex is better. Spirit-world marriages "last just so long as the parties thereto are agreeably and mutually pleased with, and attracted, to each other, and no longer"[7]

Pre-Adamism

Randolph was a believer in

hominids.[8]

Personal life

A peripatetic man, he lived in many places, including New York State, New Orleans, San Francisco, and Toledo, Ohio. He married his first wife, Mary Jane, in 1850; she was African (or possibly mixed-race).[9] Together, they had three children, only one of whom (Cora, born 1854) survived to adulthood.[10] They owned a farm in Stockbridge, New York during the 1850s, but sold it in April 1860 for one dollar. They later lived in Utica, New York, where Mary Jane worked as "a healer and dispenser of Native american remedies," in addition to helping Paschal publish and sell several books. They divorced in January 1864.[9]

Later in life he married his second wife, Kate Corson, an Irish-American woman, with whom he had one child, Osiris Budh (or Buddha) Randolph (1874–1929).[11] Corson acted as a medium and a seer in collaboration with Randolph, and published several of his books, but their relationship appears to have been conflicted for its duration.[12] He is reported to have discovered that she was having an affair shortly before his apparent death by suicide in 1875.[10] After his death, Corson continued publishing his works under the Randolph Publishing Company imprint until the early 1900s.[13]

Death

Randolph died in Toledo, Ohio, at the age of 49, under disputed circumstances. According to biographer Carl Edwin Lindgren, many questioned the newspaper article "By His Own Hand" that appeared in The Toledo Daily Blade. According to this article, Randolph had died from a self-inflicted wound to the head. However, many of his writings express his aversion to suicide.

R. Swinburne Clymer, a later Supreme Master of the Fraternitas, stated that years after Randolph's demise, in a death-bed confession, a former friend of Randolph had conceded that in a state of jealousy and temporary insanity, he had killed Randolph. Lucus County Probate Court records list the death as accidental. Randolph was succeeded as Supreme Grand Master of the Fraternitas, and in other titles, by his chosen successor Freeman B. Dowd
.

Influence and legacy

Randolph influenced both the Theosophical Society and—to a greater degree—the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor.[6]

In 1994, the historian Joscelyn Godwin noted that Randolph had been largely neglected by historians of esotericism.[6] In 1996, a biography was published, Paschal Beverly Randolph: A Nineteenth-Century Black American Spiritualist, Rosicrucian, and Sex Magician by John Patrick Deveney and Franklin Rosemont.

Published works

  • 1854 Waa-gu-Mah
  • 1859 Lara
  • 1860 The Grand Secret
  • 1860 The Unveiling
  • 1861 Dealings with the dead ; (copy 2)
  • 1861 Human Love and Dealing with the Dead
  • 1863 Pre-Adamite Man1
  • 1863 "The Wonderful Story of Ravalette". Retrieved October 18, 2020.
  • 1863 "Tom Clark and his Wife, their double dreams, and the curious things that befell them therein; being The Rosicrucian's Story". Retrieved October 18, 2020.
  • 1866 A Sad Case; A Great Wrong!2
  • 1866 After death; or, Disembodied man, 1st edition
  • 1867 "Clairvoyance, How to Produce It," Guide to Clairvoyance
  • 1868 After death; or, Disembodied man, 2nd edition
  • 1870 Seership! The Magnetic Mirror
  • 1869 Love and Its Hidden History3
  • 1870 Love and the Master Passion
  • 1872 The Evils of the Tobacco Habit
  • 1873 The New Mola! The Secret of Mediumship
  • 1874 Love, Woman, and Marriage
  • 1874 Eulis!: The History of Love
  • 1875 The Book of the Triplicate Order
  • Magia Sexualis: Sexual Practices for Magical Power (published posthumously)

Randolph also edited the Leader (Boston) and the Messenger of Light (New York) between 1852 and 1861 and wrote for the Journal of Progress and Spiritual Telegraph .[14]

Also attributed to Randolph is "Affectional Alchemy and How It Works" (c. 1870).

1 under the pseudonym "Griffin Lee".
2 as anonymous.
3 under the pseudonym "Count de St. Leon".

References

  1. ^ a b Godwin 1994, p. 248.
  2. ISBN 978-1-4384-0104-1
    .
  3. ^ Deveney (1996), p. 378.
  4. ^ Daily Illinois State Register (Springfield, IL), September 20, 1855, p. 2.
  5. ^ Godwin et al., 1995.
  6. ^ a b c d e Godwin 1994, p. 247.
  7. ^ a b c d Cohen, Lara Langer (February 8, 2023). "The Emancipatory Visions of a Sex Magician: Paschal Beverly Randolph's Occult Politics". The Public Domain Review.
  8. ^ Paschal Beverly Randolph, Pre-Adamite Man: demonstrating the existence of the human race upon the earth 100,000 thousand years ago!, 1863.
  9. ^
    ISBN 978-1-4384-5595-2
    .
  10. ^
    ISBN 978-1-4381-0806-3
    .
  11. ^ "Corson, Kate, 1854–1938". Linked Data Service. Library of Congress. Retrieved August 6, 2020.
  12. ISBN 0-7914-3119-3
    .
  13. ^ Van Vranken, Sadie. "Paschal Beverly Randolph". Black Self-Publishing. American Antiquarian Society. Retrieved August 6, 2020.
  14. ^ Lindgren 1996

Bibliography

External links

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Paschal Beverly Randolph
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