{"id":271079,"date":"2024-08-12T12:00:50","date_gmt":"2024-08-12T11:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=271079"},"modified":"2024-08-07T05:16:50","modified_gmt":"2024-08-07T04:16:50","slug":"lyttons-disciple-sorcerer-behind-ripper-murders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/08\/lyttons-disciple-sorcerer-behind-ripper-murders\/","title":{"rendered":"Lytton\u2019s Disciple: Sorcerer Behind Ripper Murders"},"content":{"rendered":"

6 Aug 2024 <\/em>– The following is part two of five within a larger 17-part series ‘Edgar Poe as Cultural Warrior.’ The first installment of the Jack the Ripper Case can be found here.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Robert D\u2019Onston: Sorcerer and Lytton Disciple<\/h3>\n

As we will come to see, Robert D\u2019Onston Stephenson had been initiated into the Rosicrucian Society by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton in 1861, worked as a surgeon in Giuseppe Garibaldi\u2019s army in Italy for two years (bringing him into contact with both Giuseppe Mazzini and Madame Blavatsky), and conducted black magic rituals with Bulwer\u2019s son Lord Robert Lytton, who served as Governor General of India from 1876-1880 overseeing the worst mass genocide in Britain\u2019s long blood-stained dominance over their \u2018crown jewel\u2019.<\/p>\n

This occured during the same period that the Theosophists were establishing their headquarters in India in 1877, and at which time it is likely that both D\u2019Onston and his occult childhood friend Robert Lytton would have come into direct contact with Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott.<\/p>\n

While the Ripper murders were underway, D\u2019Onston was a patient in London\u2019s Whitechapel Hospital during the total duration of the killings; he began writing articles on the topic of the killer\u2019s identity for his long-time employer The Pall Mall Gazette<\/em> (for whom he worked since 1869).<\/p>\n

After the ripper murders ended on November 9, 1888, D\u2019Onston wrote several strange articles for the same W.T. Stead\u2019s Pall Mall Gazette as well as Blavatsky\u2019s Lucifer Magazine on the topic of African black magic and human sacrifice.<\/p>\n

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Giuseppe Mazzini, Giuseppe Garibaldi, and Edward Bulwer-Lytton<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Robert D\u2019Onston Stevenson was born into a rich merchant family and described his early fixation with magic and hypnosis saying \u201cI was always\u2026 fond of everything pertaining to mysticism, astrology, witchcraft and what is commonly known as \u2018occult science\u2019 generally; and I devoured with avidity every book or tale that I could get hold of having reference to these arts.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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Robert D\u2019Onston Stephenson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

After studying medicine under an Edinburgh physician named Dr. James Allen, D\u2019Onston described his friendship with a young Robert Lytton in Paris in 1859, and his obsession with meeting Edward\u2019s father, the leading black magician of the British Empire (and secretary of the colonies under d\u2019Israeli) Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton:<\/p>\n

\u201cMy interest in the effects of mind upon matter once more awoke, and my physiological studies and researches were accompanied by psychological experiments. I read Lytton\u2019s Zanoni at this time with great zest \u2026 and longed excessively to know its author; little dreaming that I should one day be the pupil of the great Magist, Bulwer Lytton- the one man in modern times for whom all systems of ancient and modern magism and magic, white or black, held no secrets\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

As outlined in part 8 of The Occult Tesla<\/a>, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton\u2019s 1942 occult novel Zanoni<\/em> represented the foundational sacred text for the modern rosicrucian revival. Zanoni was a hermetic story featuring an ancient order of immortals and outlined the techniques for recruiting new initiates into this unhuman secret society.<\/p>\n

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This book was no mere piece of entertainment, but rather served as a strategic outline for oligarchist planning which charted a course of action for several generations of imperialists which directly inspired the idea of a superior Aryan race that would replace humanity.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton\u2019s works were also translated into Russian by Madame Blavatsky\u2019s mother and represented the most formative writings on young Blavatsky\u2019s mind prior to her forming the Theosophists. Blavatsky even had all members of her esoteric section of Theosophists study Lytton\u2019s Zanoni<\/em>, and one member Vittoria Cremers who would manage Lucifer Magazine and go into business with D\u2019Onston a year after the ripper murders had ended had this to say of Lytton\u2019s gospel (and D\u2019Onston\u2019s relationship to it):<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first time I ever really got behind the mind of D\u2019Onston occurred one evening when I returned to Baker Street and was mounting the first flight of stairs to enter the office. As I reached the landing I saw D\u2019Onston standing outside the door of his room. What intrigued me however, was that he appeared to be drawing some sort of sign upon it with his thumb.
\nI noticed that he was tracing with his thumb the outline of a triangle on the door\u2026 I said nothing but simply passed on into the office. A few seconds elapsed and then the door was silently opened and D\u2019Onston entered the room closing the door gently behind him. He fixed his eyes upon me as I busied myself at the desk and then asked:
\n\u2018Did you notice what I was doing, Vittoria?\u2019
\n\u2018Yes, D\u2019Onston\u2019, I replied, smiling at his serious expression. \u2018You were drawing something or other on the door, weren\u2019t you?\u2019
\nDid you notice what it was?\u2019
\nLooked to me like a triangle.
\nIt was a triangle.
\nBut you\u2019d got it upside down.
\nD\u2019Onston smiled coldly. \u2018Yes, Vittoria\u2019, he said. \u2018It was \u201cupside down\u201d, as you describe it and I\u2019ll tell you why.\u2019
\nHe seated himself upon one corner of the desk, and then went on:
\n\u2018Years ago a friend of mine dropped in just before nightfall and suggested a walk. I told him I would run upstairs for my pipe and join him in the hall. I dashed up to my room and went across to the mantelpiece for my pipe.
\n\u2018Then as I turned to go downstairs I suddenly sensed some horrible Presence outside the open door. I stood still, unable to move so petrified was I with terror. I felt that I dared not venture outside that door- that if I did I should drop down dead from sheer fright.
\n\u2018At the last I summoned up sufficient willpower to creep to the door and peer out. There was nothing to be seen, Vittoria. I scurried down the stairs to join my friend as though the whole of Hell was at my heels. Together we went out into the night, I was in a sweat of fear of something, I knew not what. Only once in my life since that day Vittoria, have I known the fear fo that Presence. Later on I learned how to guard against its intrusion by making the sign of the triangle on the door of my room before entering. It is a thing I never fail to do.
\nThis was quite true as I discovered during our residence in Baker Street, for on several other occasions I witnessed the same weird performance.
\n\u2018Keeping the spooks out I would remark, but he never replied and never and never ceased to complete his \u2018upside down\u2019 triangle. I had not the least idea at the time that there was any Magical significance either Black or White, about this sign of the triangle nor that its inversion indicated the Black Art. D\u2019Onston said nothing about it\u2026
\n‘As for his story of the \u2018horrible Presence\u2019, it faintly recalled the awe inspiring description of the Presence which figured in Bulwer Lytton\u2019s Zanoni. I had read this book on the recommendation of Helena Blavatsky soon after I joined her. To those who may not have read this very fine work I would explain that at one period of the story Zanoni endeavours to invoke the friendly spirit of Adonai; instead he found at his side \u2018the Evil Omen, the implacable Foe, with exultation and malice burning from its hell-lit eyes\u2026 As an iceberg, the breath of that Presence froze the air; as a cloud it filled the chamber and blackened the stars from heaven.
\nand then comes the terrible threat from this hideous Thing.
\n\u2019Thou art returned to the Threshold\u2019 it tells Zanoni. \u2018Thou, whose steps have trodden the verges of the infinite! And, as the goblin of its fancy seizes on a child in the dark, mighty one, who would conquer Death, I seize upon thee.\u2019
\nFiction! it may be said. Maybe, but those beliefs were a grim reality to Bulwer Lytton, through several of whose works runs the same strain of mysticism; just as was D\u2019Onston\u2019s belief in the Presence which had scared him so thoroughly, a reality.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Initiated into the Rosicrucian Mysteries<\/strong><\/h3>\n

After winning over Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton with unbounded hero-worship, D\u2019Onston was accepted as a pupil in the dark arts in 1859 writing of the experience in his 1893 autobiography:<\/p>\n

\u201cI entered, he was standing in the middle of the sacred pentagon, which he had drawn on the floor with red chalk, and holding in his extended right arm the baguette, which was pointed towards me. Standing thus, he asked me if I had duly considered the matter and had decided to enter upon the course. I replied that my mind was made up. He then and there administered to me the oaths of the neophyte of the Hermetic lodge of Alexandria- the oaths of obedience and secrecy\u2019. [1]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In his 1893 autobiography, D\u2019Onston described how he studied \u2018the forbidden arts\u2019 under Lytton: \u201cHermetics have to know all the practices of the forbidden art to enable them to overcome the devilish machinations of its professors\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

Immediately following his initiation into Lytton\u2019s Rosicrucian order, the next chapter of D\u2019Onston\u2019s life saw the young occultist become a revolutionary in Garibaldi\u2019s army, where D\u2019Onston served as a chief surgeon on the front lines of battle carrying out hundreds of amputations in warfare conditions from 1860-62.<\/p>\n

This may appear a strange career choice from a young occultist, but likely not a spontaneous decision as Garibaldi was also a grandmaster freemason and close associate of Giuseppe Mazzini. Mazzini was also close to Madame Blavatsky during this same period, and Blavatsky was known to have bragged that she had fought in Garibaldi\u2019s army in 1859-1861<\/a>\u2026 placing D\u2019Onston and the Russian mystic into several points of contact nearly 30 years prior to the Whitechapel murders.<\/p>\n

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It should be recalled that both Garibaldi and Blavatsky were also members of the Freemasonic Rite of Memphis and Misraim alongside Esoteric Section member John Yarker, Dr. Franz Hartman- leader of the German Theosophists and Ordo Templi Orientis founder Theodor Reuss.<\/p>\n

This period of endless amputations and death was later described by D\u2019Onston was years as an exhilarating experience which gave him 20 years of experience within only one year. After his Italian adventures were complete, D\u2019Onston then went to West Africa and studied black magic and even wrote articles for the Pall Mall Gazette and Lucifer Magazine in 1890 and 1891 describing his heroic murder of a woman (a witchdoctor) while there.<\/p>\n

According to researcher Philip Stephenson (a distant relative to D\u2019Onston), the young roscircucian\u2019s next career move involved becoming a journalist for the Pall Mall Gazette where he was assigned to cover Sir Charles Warren\u2019s excavations of the Temple Mount in 1869.<\/p>\n

Philip Stephenson writes:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1870 Stephenson was reporting on an archeologically excavation under the Temple Mount in Jerusalem which was led by the very same officer Charles Warren, this resulted in regularly progress reports between them. This also shows that the two men were friends at least 20 years before the Ripper murders in 1888 and that if Stephenson did have inside information about the murders\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It was while covering Sir Charles Warren\u2019s excavations of Solomon\u2019s Temple under the Dome of the Rock mosque for The Pall Mall Gazette that the two men became close friends.<\/p>\n

In 1995, Philip Stephenson discovered among his relative\u2019s possessions a leather masonic apron featuring a hidden pocket in which was featured several letters which Sir Charles Warren had written to Robert D\u2019Onston Stephenson dated 1870.<\/p>\n

The letters were discovered alongside a cypher manuscript making reference to certain \u2018new discoveries\u2019 Warren had made in Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

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