Paschal Beverly Randolph

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Paschal Beverly Randolph (October 8, 1825 - July 29, 1875) was an American medical doctor, occultist and writer.

Randolph is notable as perhaps the first person to introduce the principles of sex magic to North America, and, according to A.E. Waite, establishing the earliest known Rosicrucian order in the U.S.[1]

[edit] Biography

Sources disagree as to Randolph's birthplace (New York or Virginia). He was a free man of mixed-race ancestry. He was also a descendant of William Randolph. His father was a nephew of John Randolph of Roanoke.

His background led to his being a spokesman for the abolition of slavery, and he trained as a doctor of medicine.

He travelled widely in his youth, and his interest in mysticism and the occult can be traced to these travels, if not earlier. Randolph worked on a sailing vessel, and later journeyed through Europe, and as far east as Persia. A peripatetic man, he lived in many places, including New Orleans, New York, San Francisco, and Toledo, Ohio.

During his early public career, Randolph appeared on stage as a trance medium and advertised his services in magazines associated with the Spiritualism movement. Like many Spiritualists, he lectured in favor of Abolition; after Emancipation, he taught literacy to freed slaves in New Orleans.

Randolph founded the Fraternitas Rosae Crucis, the oldest Rosicrucian organization in the United States, which today avoids mention of his interest in sex magic. These magico-sexual theories and techniques formed the basis of much of the teachings of The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor although it is not clear whether or not Randolph himself was ever actually associated with the Order (Godwin et al, 1995).

Famous occultists and practitioners of sex magic Theodor Reuss and Aleister Crowley were heavily influenced by Randolph in both organizing the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) and in their sex magic rituals.

In 1851, Randolph made the acquaintance of Abraham Lincoln. Their friendship was close enough that, when Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, Randolph accompanied Lincoln's funeral procession in a train to Springfield, Illinois. However, Randolph was asked to leave the train when some objected to the presence of such a dark-complected passenger.

Randolph authored more than fifty books or pamphlets on magic and medicine, and even established a publishing company.

Randolph died at the age of 49. According to Professor Carl Edwin Lindgren, D.Ed.,

Many questioned the coroner's finding that Randolph died in Toledo from a self-inflicted wound to the head, for many of his writings express his aversion to suicide, and the evidence was conflicting. R. Swinburne Clymer, a later Supreme Master of the Fraternitas, stressed that years later, in a "death-bed confession," a former friend of Randolph conceded, that in a state of jealousy and temporary insanity, he had killed Randolph.

Randolph was succeeded as Supreme Grand Master of the Fraternitas, and in other titles, by his chosen successor Freeman B. Dowd.

In 1996 the biography Paschal Beverly Randolph: A Nineteenth-Century Black American Spiritualist, Rosicrucian, and Sex Magician, by John Patrick Deveney and Franklin Rosemont, was published.

[edit] References

Deveney, John Patrick and Franklin Rosemont (1996). Paschal Beverly Randolph: A Nineteenth-Century Black American Spiritualist, Rosicrucian, and Sex Magician. State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-3120-7.
Godwin, Jocelyn, Christian Chanel, and John Patrick Deveney (1995). The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor: Initiatic and Historical Documents of an Order of Practical Occultism. Samuel Weiser. ISBN 0-87728-825-9.
Biography of Paschal Berverly Randolph by Prof. Carl Edwin Lindgren; also note Dr. Lindgren's reference at American National Biography (biographical entry) Randolph, Paschal Beverly.
Carl Edwin Lindgren (1996). The Rose Cross in America. Spiritual Alchemists. New Orleans: Ars Latomorum Publications, pp. 27-32.
Randolph, Paschal Beverly (1932). SOUL, The Soul World. Beverly Hall, Quakertown, PA: The Confederation of Initiates.