Paschal Beverly Randolph (October 8, 1825 – July 29, 1875) was an American medical doctor, occultist, spiritualist, trance medium, and writer. He is notable as perhaps the first person to introduce the principles of erotic alchemy to North America, and, according to A. E. Waite established the earliest known Rosicrucian order in the United States.
Early life
Born in New York City, Randolph grew up in New York City and
was baptized at the Church of the Transfiguration, Episcopal (Manhattan). 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 having mixed English, French, German, Native American, and
African ancestry. His mother died when he was young, leaving him homeless and
penniless; he ran away to sea to support himself. From his adolescence
through to the age of twenty, he worked as a sailor.
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 Persia, where his interest in mysticism and the occult led him
to study with local practitioners of folk magic and various religions. On these
travels, he also met and befriended occultists in England and 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 immigrating to India. Randolph believed that "the Negro is destined to extinction" in the United
States.
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 trance medium, Randolph trained
as a doctor of medicine and wrote and published both fictional and instructive
books based on his theories of health, sexuality, Spiritualism, and 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 Fraternitas Rosae Crucis in 1858, and
their first lodge in San Francisco in 1861, the oldest 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.
Belief and teaching
Randolph described himself as a Rosicrucian. He had worked "largely alone", producing "his own synthesis" of "esoteric teachings".
Sex and gender
How Randolph incorporated sex into his
occult system was considered uncharacteristically bold for the period in which
he lived. 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 worldwide
revolution.
Randolph held an unusually expansive view of gender
identity, considering earthly gender to be "provisional,"
and referring to God as both male and female. 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!
In the spirit world that Randolph wrote of in elaborate
detail, human bodies are filled with electric currents 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 are agreeably and mutually pleased with, and
attracted, to each other, and no longer".
Pre-Adamism
Randolph was a believer in pre-Adamism (the belief that
humans existed on earth before the biblical Adam) and wrote the book
Pre-Adamite Man: demonstrating the existence of the human race upon the Earth
100,000 thousand years ago! Under the name of Griffin Lee in 1863. His book was
a unique contribution towards pre-Adamism because it wasn't strictly based on
biblical grounds. Randolph used a wide range of sources to write his book from
many different world traditions, esoterica, and ancient religions. Randolph
traveled to many countries of the world where he wrote different parts of his
book. In the book, he claims that Adam was not the first man and that pre-Adamite
men existed on all continents around the globe 35,000 years to 100,000 years
ago. His book was different from many of the other writings from other
pre-Adamite authors because, in Randolph's book, he claims the pre-Adamites were
civilized men. In contrast, other pre-Adamite authors argued that the pre-Adamites were
beasts or hominids.
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). Together,
they had three children, only one of whom (Cora, born 1854) survived to
adulthood. 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.
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). 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. He is reported to have discovered that
she was having an affair shortly before his apparent death by suicide in 1875.
After his death, Corson Randolph continued publishing his works under the
Randolph Publishing Company imprint until the early 1900s.
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.
In 1994, the historian Joscelyn Godwin noted that Randolph
had been largely neglected by historians of esotericism. 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!
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.
Also attributed to Randolph is "Affectional Alchemy and How It Works" (c. 1870).
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