March 2021 Newsletter
The following articles are reproduced from the March 2021 Newsletter to members. Non-members may or may not be able to relate to the contents.
In Memory of Geoffrey Hodson
Geoffrey Hodson dedicated 70 years of his life to the service of the Theosophical Society. To commemorate his birthday on 12 March, we reproduce below obituaries from his friends published in the April-June 1983 issue of Theosophy in New Zealand.
Geoffrey Hodson — Man of Two Worlds
By Mavis Hardy
Reprinted from The Theosophist in New Zealand, April-June 1983
Great sadness prevailed in Theosophical circles when it was announced that our beloved brother and friend Geoffrey Hodson had passed to a higher life on January 23rd 1983.
For the Theosophical Society in New Zealand it is the end of a most privileged era. To have had his presence with us for so long is surely the result of a beneficial collective and personal karma. May we all show our gratitude to him by doing our utmost to spread the Theosophy which he so loved throughout our land in every way we can.
Geoffrey Hodson was born at 6.00 a.m. on the 12th of March, 1886, in Wainfleet, Lincolnshire, England. His family was one of yeoman farmers from whom he inherited a healthy physical body and benefited from an open air environment. Thus were the foundations laid for his very long life of ninety six years.
He was the eldest of five children - three boys and two girls and was educated at the Grammar School at Bishop Stortfort in Hertfordshire. However, when he was fifteen years of age, the family fortunes failed, forcing him to leave school and enter the business world.
During his boyhood years, Geoffrey had several psychic experiences which suggests that he was born with some natural clairvoyant faculties. In his early twenties he made a brief study of spiritualism but it did not provide him with the philosophy of life he was seeking. Still searching for truth, he attended in Manchester a lecture by Dr. Annie Besant on “The Great White Brotherhood” and saw the radiation from her super-physical bodies – his inner vision was now opening.
As a result of this lecture, he joined in 1912 the Manchester City Lodge of the T.S., convinced that his search for truth was being rewarded. To the end of his long life of ninety six years, Theosophia was indeed truth for Geoffrey Hodson.
In 1914 he enlisted as a trooper in the Duke of Lancaster's Own Yeomanry, but he did not reach the Continent until 1918 because cavalry had hardly any part in the early phases of the war. A boyhood football injury to his left knee precluded infantry service. In 1917 he was selected for a course of training in an Officers' Training Corps. He gained his Commission, joined the Tank Corps as a Tank Commander and was despatched early in 1918 to France and Belgium.
After the successful Allied breakthrough on 8th August 1918, Lt. Hodson and his tank crew who had been in the thick of the fighting, were presented to Field Marshal Haig. For his bravery and skill in this action, Lt. Hodson was recommended for the Military Cross.
In 1919, after demobilisation, Geoffrey Hodson resumed his regular meditation and Theosophical activities. On the 17th of March he married Miss Jane Carter whom he had met earlier during his army training in Kendal, Westmorland, where she and he had sung duets in concerts for the entertainment of soldiers billeted there.
Mr. and Mrs. Hodson settled in Preston, where the former had joined the Y.M.C.A. Secretariat and worked in this city for the rehabilitation of boys discharged from Borstal institutions. Gradually his clairvoyant faculties increased and he and his wife toured Lancashire and the surrounding countryside by motorcycle and sidecar, making detailed notes on the various types of fairies and nature spirits. Many of his books, notably Fairies at Work and at Play, The Kingdom of Faerie and The Kingdom of the Gods contain the fruits of this research.
When Mr. and Mrs. Hodson were holidaying in the beautiful valley of Sheepscombe in Gloucestershire in 1925, various members of the Angelic Hosts were studied and Angelic Teachings received which were dictated by Geoffrey to Jane. The Brotherhood of Angels and of Men records the messages; Be Ye Perfect deals with the education of humanity in the New Age; The Angelic Hosts describes the Hierarchies of the Angels; Man, The Triune God details human evolution through the first four Initiations; and The Supreme Splendour outlines the life forces involved in the emanation of a solar system and the functions of the Angelic Hosts. Mr Hodson's Angelic Teacher, an Arupa Deva, has remained in contact with him over the years.
In 1924 some of the London Research Group asked Geoffrey Hodson to try some experiments in occult chemistry – on the same lines as had been followed by Dr. Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater. He agreed, though he had little or no knowledge of occult chemistry or physics, nor had he ever carried out this type of clairvoyant research into the atom.
In December 1956, when Geoffrey was living in New Zealand, he invited Dr. Lyness, M.B., Ch.B., to co-operate with him in a series of clairvoyant investigations of the atom. The results were published in a pamphlet written by Dr. Lyness, “Some Recent Clairvoyant Research in N.Z.” In the Ojai Valley News (California) of 11.2.82, Dr. Lyness is quoted thus on Geoffrey: “His integrity is unquestionable, his care and thoroughness is impeccable. He does his absolute best to give only accurate information. From that point of view, Geoffrey Hodson is a true scientist and occultist.”
Up to 1929 Geoffrey Hodson was engaged in the clairvoyant diagnosis and occult treatment of disease in London, where he and his wife then resided. Medical men brought patients and collaborated with him in various forms of treatment, notably the use of colour and in what is now termed psychosomatic medicine of which he was one of the instigators. A spiritual healing group met regularly in his rooms, invoking divine and angelic aid for patients. At the same time he was using his clairvoyance as an instrument of research in embryology, angelology anthropology, geology, psychology, physics, astronomy and medicine.
When Geoffrey's mother died, he became free to accept an invitation to attend and address the Septennial World Congress of the T.S. in Chicago and to carry out a lecture tour of the U.S.A. For the next three years, Mr. and Mrs. Hodson toured the States, the former researching the early history of the Pueblo Indians, Mayan and Aztec archaeology, the supposed fourth dimension, health and disease, and the links between sound, colour and form, as in music.
In 1933 they visited Manila, Java, Singapore, Malaya, Ceylon and India and in 1937 journeyed to the Cape Province of South Africa to stay with Mr. and Mrs. Quail and their daughter Ethelwynne, a sculptress, poetess and painter who was responsible for the illustrations, under the clairvoyant's guidance, for The Kingdom of the Gods. Later, a Central African medicine man in Salisbury accorded Geoffrey a most interesting interview, describing, in part, the Initiatory Ceremony.
In 1959 a Theosophical Research Group was set up in South Africa with the aim of correlating scientific findings with theosophical ideas re primitive man, particularly Australopithecus. Fossil remains were sent to Geoffrey Hodson in N.Z. and in 1960 he went to South Africa to continue the research in which he impressed everyone with his objectivity and care in observation. The following is from a comment by Professor J. T. Robinson D.Sc., “I was able to work very closely with Geoffrey Hodson for some months during the late fifties testing his clairvoyant powers on pieces of fossils of the early man about two million years of age. Each session, carried out in the field site from which the specimens came, was recorded verbatim on a tape recorder. No indication was given him what I thought of his information until after the series of tests were completed and analysed. Many of the questions put to him required answers which could be positively checked against known original specimens. The analysis showed that every statement made by him which was able to be positively checked against known specimens was absolutely accurate and most of what could not be positively checked was in close agreement with what we thought to be correct.”
Let us return to his personal life; since 1929 his wife Jane had suffered from multiple sclerosis which gradually led to more and more paralysis. Geoffrey served as President of the Blavatsky Lodge during the period he resided in Sydney to be near Jane. A Perth Theosophist, Miss Sandra Chase, then generously offered to undertake the care of Mrs. Hodson, thus freeing Geoffrey for his international lecture work. In 1940 he accepted an invitation from the N.Z. Section to tour the main centres, arriving in N.Z. on the 17th December, to be Guest of Honour at the 44th Annual Convention being held in Christchurch. Sandra brought Jane over to Epsom, Auckland, where her condition steadily worsened until she passed to a higher life on the 27th October, 1962.
Sandra and Geoffrey later married and carried on working for Theosophy and also for organisations fostering Animal Welfare. Geoffrey founded and became the first National President of the N.Z. Vegetarian Society which is still flourishing in a number of centres in N.Z. He was also elected President of the Council of Combined Animal Welfare Organisations of N.Z. At intervals he journeyed to Adyar, where the then President of the T.S., Mr. N. Sri Ram, installed him as Director of Studies of the School of the Wisdom in 1953-54, 1954-55, 1961 and 1972-3. To this honour was added the Subba Row gold medal, which he received as “the author of the most valuable contributions of the year to theosophical literature”.
Nineteen sixty four was a year of world-wide lecturing – Australia, Manila, Hong Kong, Viet-Nam, Lebanon, Egypt, Israel, Greece. Again, 1966-68, the Hodsons travelled to the Middle East, the United Kingdom, the U.S.A. and Switzerland and at the Fifth World Congress of the T.S. at Salzburg, Geoffrey lectured on "A World in Transition". Always in his travels Geoffrey was deeply interested in uncovering relics and indications of the Ancient Mysteries and of the Lesser and Greater Initiations which the Hierophants of the Mystery Schools conferred.
During this busy life of travelling and lecturing, of healing and research, Geoffrey found time to write constantly, being the author of 47 major books (including 4 volumes on the hidden wisdom in the Bible), articles in various magazines, booklets, pamphlets, as well as many recording for the N.Z. Section Cassette Library. He continued writing almost up to his death.
The lifework of this remarkable man is an unparalleled example of the way in which a person’s latent powers may be developed and used unstintingly in the service of all that lives.
Mavis Hardy, General Secretary
Geoffrey, Friend and Counsellor
By Roma & Brian Dunningham
Reprinted from The Theosophist in New Zealand, April-June 1983
With all his other remarkable capacities, Geoffrey Hodson was first and foremost a human being – a loving friend full of understanding and humour – wise, compassionate yet humble.
He transformed lives and inspired effort. He was truly a universal man. His “family” included people of all races and cultures to whom he was ever available with his deep insight and help. He loved little children and they loved him.
Geoffrey’s devotion and service to the Masters of the Wisdom he knew and revered, rayed out to all within his sphere of influence, inspiring them to seek the Path and follow it. His attunement with the higher worlds shone through his physical vehicle with radiance and beauty, reflecting those “heights” he described with such clarity in his teachings and writings. Life is not merely materialistic existence but is a divine force flowing with purpose, vitality and intelligence. Geoffrey is no longer physically with us but his influence and example will ever remain in this life and those to come.
Roma Dunningham, Editor Theosophy in New Zealand
Brian
Dunningham, Assistant General Secretary