Robert Felkin

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Dr Robert William Felkin, M.D.
Born	1853 Nottingham, England
Died	1926 Havelock North, New Zealand
Occupation	Medical Missionary and Explorer; Ceremonial Magician
Spouse	Mary Mander; Harriet
Parents	Robert Felkin Sr.
Children	Ethelwyn Felkin, Samuel Denys Felkin

Robert William Felkin was a medical missionary and explorer, a ceremonial magician and member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a prolific author on Uganda and Central Africa, and early anthropologist, with an interest in ethno-medicine and tropical diseases.

He was founder of the Stella Matutina, a splinter lodge of the Golden Dawn. Felkin undertook a retreat with the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield in 1903, and seriously considered becoming a member of the community, before going on to found the Stella Matutina in that same year and, later, the Whare Ra lodge in Havelock North, New Zealand in 1912.^[1]

Contents 1 Early Life 2 Medical missionary in Africa 3 First marriage and medical practice 4 Theosophy and the Golden Dawn 5 The Sun Masters 6 Rosicrucianism 7 New Zealand 8 See also 9 Sources 10 References

[edit] Early Life

Robert William Felkin was born in Beeston, Nottinghamshire, in 1853, the son of Robert Felkin, a Nonconformist lace manufacturer.^[1][2] His grandfather, William Felkin (1795-1874), son of a Baptist minister, remains one of the best known names in the Victorian lace industry and was mayor of Nottingham in 1851, when he exhibited at the Great Exhibition. But he overreached, and the business failed disastrously in 1864, when Felkin retired to write standard works on the lace and hosiery industries. ^[3] His son and partner Robert Felkin Sr settled in Wolverhampton to take up a position as manager of the home department of Mander Brothers, varnish manufacturers. Robert Jr was educated at Wolverhampton Grammar School, where he met the explorer David Livingstone, who inspired him to become a medical missionary.^[1][4]

[edit] Medical missionary in Africa

He worked for a period in Chemnitz, Germany, after his schooling, where his uncle Henry Felkin lived, and became fluent in the language.^[5] In about 1876 he began studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh.^[1] In 1878, as yet unlicensed, he joined a mission led by the Church Missionary Society to Central Africa. He travelled up the Nile to Khartoum, where he met General Gordon, and then on through what was then wild and unmapped country to the Great Lakes. Eventually he spent two years in Africa, and became personal physician to King M’tesa, who had previously tried to kill him. In Zanzibar, he actively campaigned against the slave trade.^[1][4] He published several articles on tropical medicine and childbirth in medical journals,^[6] and also wrote Uganda and the Egyptian Soudan (1882, with Rev.C.T. Wilson), Egypt Present and To Come (1885), Uganda (1886), and other African works.^[1]

In 1881, he returned to Edinburgh when his health deteriorated to complete his medical studies (LRCP, LRCS, Ed, 1884). While still a medical student he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a member of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and a corresponding Fellow of the Berlin Anthropological Society.^[4]

[edit] First marriage and medical practice

In 1882 Felkin married his first wife, Mary ("Polly"), daughter of Samuel Small Mander of Wolverhampton, his father's employer, who had been a friend since childhood, and became a collaborator in both his esoteric work and his work for child welfare. They had a son (Samuel) Denys and a daughter, Ethelwyn (1883-1962), who was to publish on the legacy of the Golden Dawn under the name "Ethel Felkin".^[5][1]

In 1884 he studied further in Marburg, acquiring his M.D. there in 1885. Following this he practiced as a doctor in Edinburgh for some years, returning to Africa and travelling frequently with his wife in Europe.^[1][4][7]

[edit] Theosophy and the Golden Dawn

Mary and Robert seem to have been introduced to esotericism through a Bible study circle they joined in Edinburgh; other scriptures were discussed, including the Tao te ching and the Bhagavad Gita, and some members of the group were Theosophists. Robert and Mary joined the Theosophical Society in Edinburgh in 1886, but found it lacking in terms of ritual, and eventually joined Brodie-Innes' Amen-Ra Temple of the Golden Dawn on 1894-03-12.^[1]

He continued to write and publish: he edited (with others) a collection of the letters and journals of Mehmet Emin Pasha, whom he had met (translated by Mary), which appeared in 1888, and published Hypnotism, or Psycho-Therapeutics in 1890.^[8] Following a breakdown from strain and overwork he transferred his practice to London in 1896.^[1]

In 1903 Mary died and Robert reinforced his commitment to both Anglican Christianity and occultism. He made a retreat at the monastery of the Mirfield fathers, the Community of the Resurrection, and considered joining the order. Several of the Mirfield fathers had an interest in Rosicrucian and Golden Dawn Christian mysticism, and regarded Felkin as an eminent figure in that tradition. One of these priests, Father Fitzgerald, would later play a key role in bring Felkin to New Zealand.^[1]

Also in 1903, a schism occurred within the Order of the Golden Dawn, when Felkin and Brodie-Innes split from A.E. Waite and formed the magically-inclined Order of the Stella Matutina. (The poet W.B. Yeats joined the Stella Matutina and was a member for 20 years.) Felkin’s main temple in London was called Amoun.^[9]

[edit] The Sun Masters

From the time that Felkin assumed leadership of the Stella Matutina, he came increasingly under the influence of the "Sun Masters", being the fabled Secret Chiefs of the order and other supposed adepts on the astral plane; having these contacts reinforced his position as leader in the order. Around 1908 he contacted an "Arab Teacher" called Ara Ben Shemesh, from a Near Eastern "Temple in the Desert" inhabited by "Sons of Fire", who had been given special permission to contact and teach Western students.^[1]

[edit] Rosicrucianism

Felkin was initiated Freemasonry in Mary Chapel Lodge, Edinburgh, on 1907-01-08, was passed to the Fellow Craft degree on 12 February and raised to Master Mason on 26 February. On 11 April that same year he was admitted to the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, Metropolitan College, to which only Master Masons are admitted. The officiating celebrant was Dr. W. Wynn Westcott, Supreme Magus of that society and co-founder of the Golden Dawn.

Felkin's interest in Freemasonry seems to have been slight, for he was never Master of the Lodge nor joined the Holy Royal Arch, and it is unlikely that he joined any higher degrees. His motive for joining Freemasonry and the SRIA seems to have been to gain credibility with continental occultists and contact members of the original Rosicrucian society he believed still existed in Germany, where he traveled with Harriet in 1906, 1910 and 1914. He hoped to find Anna Sprengel, the (likely invented) adept under whose name the founding of the Golden Dawn had been warranted, and he believed that the tomb of Christian Rosencreutz still existed in Germany in a secret location.^[10] On one of his trips he established contact with Rudolf Steiner in Germany and claimed to have contacted other Rosicrucian adepts. Felkin considered Steiner an extremely high initiate and an almost godlike magician, and he incorporated elements of Anthroposophy into his practice, including homeopathy.^[7][1][10]

During their 1914 trip the Felkins became stranded in Germany when Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August. Harriet's fictionalised account of his life suggests that he had been sent there on an urgent mission by the Sun Master Ara Ben Shemesh, despite all warnings of impending war. They managed to avoid arrest, and escaped the country via the neutral Netherlands with the help of German Masons.^[1][10]

[edit] New Zealand

Felkin was appointed Inspector General of colonial colleges for the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia in 1916, although he seems not to have functioned in this capacity.^[10] In 1912 he and his family paid a prolonged visit to New Zealand. On returning to Britain in 1916, Felkin with tireless zeal founded three more daughter-Lodges of the Stella Matutina, together with a side-order and the Guild of St. Raphael.^[11] He published on the theme of 'Rosicrucian medicine' ^[12] and, at the height of the German U-boat activity, emigrated permanently with his family to New Zealand, as his health broke down with recurrent malaria and other tropical diseases.^[4]

Dr Felkin had established the Smaragdum Thalasses Temple of the Stella Matutina in Havelock North, New Zealand in 1912. The New Zealand Order became known by the Maori name of Whare Ra or "the House of the Sun". Foundations of the house at Whare Ra were laid down by the architect, Chapman Taylor, who later became a member of both the Golden Dawn and the Order of the Table Round (Ordo Tabulae Rotundae), a neo-Arthurian mystical and chivalric order also brought to New Zealand by Felkin.^[1]

Felkin spent the rest of his life in New Zealand, where he continued to practise as a consulting physician as well as a magician between bouts of ill health. His strong personality and clinical acumen, combined with a kind and generous nature brought him patients from far afield, including Australia. On 28 December 1926, he died at Havelock North, and was buried in the Havelock North cemetary facing the Whare Ra, wearing the cloak, mantle and purple cross of a Knight of the Ordo Tabulae Rotundae.^[10] He was survived by his second wife Harriet, his daughter Ethelwyn, and two sons;^[4] Harriet and Ethelwyn were later buried with him.^[10]

[edit] See also

• Stella Matutina
• Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
• Hermeticism
• Magic (paranormal)

[edit] Sources

• Ethel Felkin, Inquire Within: Light-bearers of Darkness (Boswell, London, 1930)
• Ethel Felkin, The Trail of the Serpent (Boswell, London, 1935)
• Ellic Howe, The Magicians of the Golden Dawn: A Documentary History of a Magical Order 1887-1923 (Samuel Weiser 1978). ISBN 0-87728-369-9.
• Mittal Shruti, ‘True Impression or False Perception? A glimpse of 19th-century African medicine through the eyes of Robert Felkin, medical student and missionary’ (DHMSA, 2004)
• Biography from Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia — Felkin College.

[edit] References