Charles Dickens

The Victorian novelist Charles Dickens was interested in ghosts and the paranormal, but was publicly critical of the popular Spiritualist Movement.

He belonged to “The Ghost Club”, which investigated the paranormal, and which was founded by Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge – a highly influential college. Other Ghost Club members included Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle.

Dickens experimented with mesmerism/hypnosis for healing.

His last novel, “The Mystery Of Edwin Drood”, features alchemy, mesmerism and sexual magic; and has Rosicrucian references. The character Jasper John has occult powers and wants to alleviate the pain of his boring life, and wants to escape the ‘chains of materialism’. Like Sherlock Holmes he smokes opium.

This, IMO, refers to the Great Work.

I discuss Dickens’ “Oliver Twist” in my article “Youth and the Great Work”.

Dickens hints that Fagin is a homosexual and even a paedophile.

Dickens’ friends included the occult novelist and politician Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Together they founded the Guild Of Literature And Art. Lytton wrote “Vril”, about an underground race who employ a mystical force. The novel influenced the Theosophy movement and the New Age movement.

Lytton’s novel “Zanoni” features a Rosicrucian who fears the loss of his immortality if he falls in love, which sounds a bit like Adam and Eve losing their divinity.