Paschal Beverly Randolph

The teaching

Taught from his own books, above all Seership! (1870) and Eulis! (1874).

The seer and the medium

Randolph began on the Spiritualist platform and turned against it. The passive medium, who empties the mind and lends the body to whatever comes, is in his teaching open to every influence, and he came to hold that such passivity wears down the nerves and the will. The seer is the opposite: one who keeps the will awake and the self in command, and who sees by the soul's own power rather than by being taken over. All his later teaching is a training of that power.

The four powers of the will

Magia Sexualis, the book compiled from his writings and published under his name in 1931, names four powers of the will to be trained, each under a word coined for it. Volantia is the will in its calm and steady exercise, held without strain or excitement, a quiet pressure rather than a clenched effort. Decretism is the will in command: the inner decree, made once and clearly, that a thing shall be. Posism is the posture of receiving, the setting of body and mind into the attitude that fits what is sought, so that it can come. Tirauclairism is the power to call up an image clearly and hold it steady before the inner eye.

In his teaching the four belong together. Calm keeps the will from exhausting itself, the decree gives it a direction, the posture lets what is sought be received, and the clear image gives the will a form to work on.

The magnetic mirror

The mirror is the seer's chief instrument: a dark, polished surface, often concave, into which the seer gazes until it seems to cloud and then to open, and in which images, scenes and faces may appear. The mirror sees nothing itself. It is a focus for the soul's sight, a place where attention gathers and the inner eye can open, and in Randolph's word it is magnetised by the seer's own steady use.

The instrument that matters more is the seer. Seership sets out a rule of life for it: plain food taken in moderation, no strong drink, deep, quiet and regular breathing, sittings kept at regular hours, and a will held calm and clear. The house adds that sittings should be short and stopped at any sign of strain, and the general craft of the glass is taught, with its cautions, in Pendulum and scrying.

He distinguishes grades of sight. In the lower the seer sees by the help of spirits or of another person's magnetism, half passive; in the highest, which he calls absolute clairvoyance, the soul sees for itself, awake and in command of itself, and this alone he counts true seership.

Love as a power

Eulis teaches that the love of man and woman is the deepest force in human nature: rightly used, the root of health, genius and spiritual power; abused, the source of misery and disease. Its right use is within a faithful union of two who love each other, freely and as equals, and he insists that the woman's will and fulfilment count as much as the man's. Lust, coercion and selfish pleasure are for him the poison of the same power.

The moment of union is, in his teaching, a moment of power. If at that moment both hold one prayer or one aim, together and with one will, it rises with the force of the whole being, and he counts health, harmony in the home and the strengthening of the soul among its fruits. The house teaches it as his doctrine and promises nothing from it, and whatever touches the body belongs only between adults who freely consent.