The Dilemma of Making a Humble Adept Public
Nobody talked about him, nobody mentioned him by name, his teachings were anonymized and little known. If he was ever mentioned in public articles, his name was veiled. Then, about 120 years after his death (1905) today this long-forgotten Christian mystic and Rosicrucian has been remembered and is receiving all the attention he deserves. [1]–[2] That being said, some of the attention he would not have appreciated.
Over the last few years a few ideas have arisen on the internet that can only be described as wishful thinking by those who got ecstatic about him in the wake of his sudden popularity. Erik Dilloo-Heidger and the author of this article (Christine Eike) are not so happy about the latter. Twisting facts and lack of source criticism are never allowed in serious research.
Was he a secret Rosicrucian guide to at least 54 members of the Theosophical Society? YES. Did he have the special abilities of seership? According to his students YES. Did his spiritual students call him “John” as his spiritual name YES. Was he the reincarnation of “John the Evangelist returned?” There starts the problem. This issue opens a whole can of worms.
We agree that Alois Mailänder was truly astonishing in several ways. Born in 1843 as the illegitimate son of a factory worker and ending up as a weaver at a factory in Kempten, Allgäu, he had no schooling and several of his students describe him as illiterate. Indeed, he could hardly scribble his own name, as several of the letters addressed to Gustav Meyrink prove. Yet he kept an extensive correspondence with many of his students. Most of this correspondence has been lost, but 44 letters to Gustav Meyrink have been preserved and digitized[3] and can be read on the Internet. About 150 Mailänder letters written to the well-known Theosophist Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden were recently found in the Rudolf Steiner archives in Dornach[4].
In many ways Alois Mailänder can be compared to Jakob Böhme, the shoemaker from Görlitz from the 17th century, who wrote remarkable mystical texts which had a profound influence on mystical and philosophical movements. Many of his treatises were copied by hand and circulated only among friends. In the same way Mailänder´s Soul and Form teachings were copied and circulated, yet they had to be penned by others, just as his letters had to be. Despite students saying he was illiterate, Mailänder kept up to date with quite some literature; books that probably were read aloud in his circle, the Covenant of Promise.
It was in 1877 that Mailänder awoke in spiritual power. By listening to his Inner Word, a power of seership and gnosis that allowed him to guide others, he would answer the questions of his students, addressed either in letters or in the circle at his home (Bruderheim).
The Soul and Form teachings of Mailänder, now published in 2021 for the first time, make the impression of a profoundly deep thinker and must be read and meditated upon. They give food for many a contemplation. Alongside this, Mailänder delivered a unique form of bodily spiritual alchemy, one which would lead to Rebirth. His method was based on the oral teachings of J.B Kerning, coupled with Jane Lead’s Christian Theosophy.[5] His students experienced bodily rebirth pains as signs of spiritual progress and even symbols appeared on their skin; signs that the “baptism of the blood” was taking place in the body.
In this respect we must call him remarkable.
Several key ideas arise in Mailänder’s Soul Teaching and letters, such as:
- The idea that astral projection is a delusional pursuit. Mailänder was adamant that we are not here to leave the body but are here to transmute it to attain spiritual rebirth. The body is integral to triggering the rebirth itself.
- All our suffering in life serves a purpose. The power of rebirth “slays through life,” so that all our pains and experience lead us closer to the rebirth.
- Drawing the spirit into the body and our life initiates the Baptism of Water.
- The body is transformed through the Baptism of the Blood.
- Signs appear on the skin indicating spiritual progress and these signs also determine new sets of prayers for use in the work of internal-heart praying.
- Mailänder provided a register of symbols and spiritual signs of progress.
See Samuel Robinson’s Alois Mailander: A Rosicrucian Remembered for full details.
Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden gives an example from his diary, 25 September 1896:
In the evening John’s great chastisement speech. John declared that the claim of the leaders at T.S. Headquarters in London, that they could leave their bodies in the astral, to be a lie and a hoax. “It doesn’t need such dislocation either. We have everything in us, everything comes into our sphere. Going to the master in the astral body does not really exist. Our place where we unite is not the abode of a Master, but God. We have to find the life force and freedom within ourselves… Nobody can help another. Everyone must find the master within himself. We become free through the Redeemer within us.[6]
That highly educated people, many of them Theosophists, let themselves be taught and guided by him, by all accounts by an illiterate, is also quite remarkable. His influence did not end with Gustav Meyrink, Franz Hartmann, Friedrich Eckstein, Karl Kellner, Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden, Karel Weinfurter and the like. His students formed larger circles, which had a lasting impact. Until recently the world was unaware of this impact.
Mailänder did not want any form of publicity. “There is no greater horror than a mass of people who adore you,” he wrote to Hübbe-Schleiden on 11 July 1894.[7] He only wanted a small circle of dedicated students around him. He was therefore very selective of whom he wanted to accept as a pupil. Having approved a student, he made him or her promise not to talk about him, at least not in public. For Theosophists, he was a kind of “insider” secret.
His students respected his wish, so they anonymized him, if they ever described him in writing (and that was largely in diaries and private notebooks that were never meant to be published). Thus, in writing about him, they only called him “J.” for John, his spiritual name, the leader, a German Adept, the master, the M. Amongst each other they mostly called him Johannes (John) or the leader or guide. A prime example is Weinfurter’s book “Man’s Highest Purpose,” or Meyrink’s “Die Verwandlung des Blutes”.[8]
It was Emil Bock (Rudolf Steiner’s biographer) who discovered his real name in private letters. He first published Mailänder´s identity in The Life and Times of Rudolf Steiner. We only found the name “Mailänder” in connection with “Johannes” in the diaries in Hübbe-Schleiden’s estate, which originally were not meant for publication. Considering that Meyrink mentions 54 students it is remarkable that Mailänder remained secret! We have managed to identify who they were, but not all of them.
Was Helena Petrovna Blavatsky a student of Mailänder?
Blavatsky said of Mailänder that “there is only one initiate in Germany today, and he lives in Kempten, but he is not of our school”.[9]
Martina Maria Sam[10] tells that in May 1886 the well-known theosophists Mary Gebhard and Countess Constance Wachtmeister came to Kempten to suggest that Mailänder and Gabele could renew the theosophical society in Germany, but they refused because this was “not according to their mandate”. But in February 1887 Mailänder, who has meanwhile moved to a place near Elberfeld and Mary Gebhard, says in a letter that he had become a member of this theosophical society and gives the following reasons for that
I have joined the Indian Theosophical Society, as has Salomon, for the reason that I and Salomon have long since spoken convincingly of this teaching. In the main, it agrees with our own teaching. There is only one truth, and it is God, but in order to learn to recognise it, one has to work practically, and this is taught to us by Jesus Christ and the Indian theosophy. – The Buddhist catechism has also contributed a great deal to this step. I also have several in America who are members of the Indian Society, and who much prefer to be guided and led by me, because I myself am a member of this Society. My principle is to examine everything and to keep the best, for I have remained quite the same in my faith, but much of the Indian teaching is wisdom and it is this that I recognise.[11]
Yet in a letter of 24 November 1887, he makes the following remark about Blavatsky and Olcott:
We have nothing to do with the leaders, we are not looking for personalities, but we only agree with the spirit that animates the Indian teachings. Mrs Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott and the former emissary Dr Hartmann are just as important to us as a Munich milkmaid pushing a cart.[12]
So, is it likely that Madam Blavatsky was a real student of Mailänder? I would say no. But that she knew about him is unquestionable. Hübbe-Schleiden says directly in his diary on 1 August 1896:
Perhaps it is connected with the fact that Günther, in the letter that I received last night, with the promise of his coming here, expressed his concern as to whether this would not contradict the rules of the E.S.T. However, he relies on my guidance in this matter, since I am in the same position as he is.
I do not believe that the rules of the E.S.T. are directed against a connection with Johannes. For not only has H. P. B. already told Arthur Gebhard that he is at the right source here, but Annie Besant also expressed herself in agreement when I recently told her in London that I would visit Mailänder again, and that he too would be inspected by the masters of the T.S. or by their brotherhood. Also, M. does indeed present himself in a very decidedly friendly manner to the. T.S. And after all, it only depends on where and how one finds guidance to connect with the spiritual world. I was not enabled to do so in London. Here I am. This must also be decisive for Günther. – By the way, I wrote to Annie Besant from here.[13]
Yet Willy Schrödter in his Rosicrucian Notebook page 131 states that Blavatsky, amongst others, belonged to this mystic school of Mailänder in Darmstadt. Now it should be said, Schrödter is often not too accurate with his sources. Mailänder moved to Dreieichenhain near Darmstadt in 1890, and Blavatsky left for London already in April 1887, never to return. But spring 2022 Samuel Robinson and Erik Dilloo-Heidger visited Mailänder’s old house in Dreieichenhain, and in that connection Roger Heil showed them a letter, written 8 October 1941 by Alfred Müller-Edler[14] which reads:
Now, finally, a few words about Mailänder. Gustav Meyrink (1868-1932) told me at the time something like the following: I had a guru from the 23-32nd year i.e., a simple, enlightened journeyman weaver, to whom even the Blavatsky (1831-91) came on pilgrimage with the Indian Bahij. A man a la Jakob Böhme (1575-1624 )…[15]
It must be said that this letter is from memory of what Meyrink once related to him. Meyrink himself says in his Transfiguration of the Blood (page 11 f.) that O. K. told him of this brahman Bahij as one of Mailänder´s disciples. But in that text, he does not mention Blavatsky herself. Yet, if Bahij really came to Mailänder together with Blavatsky, this must have happened in the summer or autumn 1885, the same time as Hartmann made his acquaintance. Because from July 1885 to May 1886 Blavatsky stayed in Würzburg.[16] But at the end of the year 1885, she and Bahij, who had been quite close, had a great quarrel, to never reconcile again.
What we can say for sure is that both Blavatsky and Mailänder knew of each other, that they perhaps met once or twice, but to make a student and teacher relation out of it is drawing it much too far in my opinion.
Was Alois Mailänder the Reincarnation of John the Evangelist?
Mailänder’s spiritual name was “John” amongst his followers and another issue arises here because some Theosophists described him as the reincarnation of John the Evangelists.
Was he John returned, or was this just his spiritual name?
The practice of giving spiritual names in Mailänder’s circle originated from another Christian mystical community which also in arose Kempten. During Mailänder’s youth, the followers of Martin Boos, known as the “Awakened Brethren” were still alive. Boos founded his movement in the 1790’s and his spiritual name was “Joseph,” and another named “Mary” helped people in the community give birth to “Christ in you” as representing the Biblical mother of Jesus.[17]
Mailänder gave each of his students spiritual names as well. Meyrink was “Ruben Juda,” for example. The names were Biblical because they signified a seed that could come to life.
Now, in the Awakened Brethren movement, the spiritual names given did not mean any person was the return or reincarnation of a Biblical figure. We must start here to understand what Mailänder intended with the spiritual names he gave to others. It is also clear that Mailänder did not see Meyrink as the return of Ruben.
Meyrink describes a mystical circle in his novel “The Green Face” that is modelled after the Covenant of Promise in many ways. There he gives some ideas about these spiritual names (Geistesnamen) and defines their use:
Her aunt … explained: “We all have spiritual names; for example, Jan Swammerdam is King Solomon, his sister is called Sulamith and I am ‘Gabriele’, which is the feminine form of the archangel Gabriel, but I am usually called the Guardian of the Threshold, for it is up to me to gather the scattered souls in the universe and lead them back to Paradise. But you will understand all this better later, Doctor, for you do belong to us, but without knowing it; your spiritual name is King Balthazar! Have you never had pain of crucifixion?”
Sephardi became more and more confused.
“Sister Gabriele is, I fear, a little too impetuous,” Jan Swammerdam took the floor with a smile. “For many years ago, a true prophet of the Lord arose here in the house, a simple shoemaker named Anselm Klinkherbogk. You will meet him later today. He lives above us.”
“We are by no means spiritualists, as you may suppose, Mynheer; almost, I would say, the opposite, for we have nothing to do with the realm of the dead. Our aim is eternal life. – Now there is a secret power in every name, and if we speak this name into our heart with closed lips, incessantly, until it constantly fills our being for day and night, we draw the spiritual power into our blood, which, circulating in the veins, changes our body in time.
This gradual transformation of our body – for it alone must be changed, the spirit in itself has been perfect since the beginning – manifests itself in all kinds of feelings, which are the harbingers of the state called ‘spiritual rebirth”
And later goes on:
“It is now fifty years since this promise [that all the miseries of earthly existence would depart] was given to us, but patience must be exercised, and whatever may come, we must hold fast to the practice of murmuring the spiritual name into our hearts without ceasing until the rebirth is complete.”
“If you cannot make sense of what is going on in our circle, Mejufrouw, do not be misled by it. Often a path leads downwards and yet it is the shortest bridge to the next ascent. The fever of spiritual recovery sometimes looks like diabolical rot. I am not ‘King Solomon’ and Lazarus Eidotter is not ‘Simon the Crossbearer’, as Miss de Bourignon takes it too externally, because he once lent Klinkherbogk money in need, – but in itself this mixing up of Old and New Testament is therefore not yet nonsense. – We see in the Bible not only the record of events of a past time, but a path from Adam to Christ, which we have to go through in ourselves in the magical way of an inner growth from ‘name’ to ‘name’, that is: from the development of strength to the development of strength,” said Swammerdam … “from the expulsion from paradise to the resurrection …”[18]
We cannot say that the return of Biblical figures was unfamiliar to Mailänder’s world though. Jakob Lorber was a favourite author of Mailänder, and Lorber stated that Swedenborg was Daniel returned. As well, Mailänder followed Jane Lead’s writings, who also predicted that soon John would return and bring forth a new ministry of love. Still, it is quite clear, in our opinion, that the use of Biblical names in Mailänder’s circle did not signify reincarnated figures.
On the other hand, Meyrink is portraying a “John the Evangelist” figure in his The White Dominican novel as someone he knows as John returned and Franz Hartmann enthusiastically informed his correspondents far and wide that the “beloved disciple John is still living in the body on earth,” showing a consideration quite different from John just being a spiritual name.[19]
One possibility is that some of the Theosophists who became Mailänder’s students, having absorbed much from Blavatsky’s Indian-Tibetan doctrines, especially the reincarnation doctrine, perceived Mailänder’s spiritual name through the lens of Theosophy.
From what we know about Mailänder’s character from his letters, he certainly would not have claimed any high stature of import. What is important, was that Rudolf Steiner also described his teacher as a returned John figure, so it appears Hartmann’s ideas about a “John” reincarnation spread throughout the Theosophical Society.
Was Alois Mailänder Rudolf Steiner’s teacher and master?
Having studied Mailänder and his life and thoughts for the last years, we agree on the following: much has yet to be uncovered and quite a few questions need further investigations. Yet, as far as the sources available can tell us, Steiner was not among Mailänder’s students during Mailänder’s lifetime and cannot be counted as a member of the Covenant of Promise and the disciples that frequented the house of Mailänder, neither in Kempten nor later in Dreieichenhain. Steiner told us about an – for him – important teacher and master which he met around the year 1880. At that time Mailänder was only known amongst a small circle of factory friends and his spiritual development was not yet complete, according to his own brief description of the matter.[20]He entered the scene only from 1884/85 onwards, at the wake of his acquaintance with Hübbe-Schleiden, Hartmann and countess Spreti from München. Neither Emil Bock, the first to give us the full name of Mailänder in 1959/61, nor Marita Maria Sam in her latest article about the Theosophical Society, state that they ever met. But she says:
Although Rudolf Steiner did not meet Alois Mailänder personally, it is a strange constellation that he had a lot to do with people during his very last time in Vienna, who were in the theosophical circle around Marie Lang at Bellevue Palace and who were also Mailänder’s students – above all Friedrich Eckstein, but also Arthur Gebhard, Franz Hartmann and Carl Polykarp zu Leiningen-Billigheim. Rudolf Steiner’s path initially led him out of this circle of mystics and to Weimar and Berlin. And in the circle of the Theosophical Society, which he joined in 1902, he again met a number of people who had been students of Alois Mailänder and now became his pupils.[21]
The circle around Friedrich Eckstein and Leiningen-Billigheim in Vienna passed on to Steiner a knowledge of J.B. Kerning but did not establish any contact between him and Alois Mailänder. If Eckstein ever told him about Mailänder, we do not know. Eckstein was very secretive about the matter and like Mary Gebhard’s circle, kept Steiner out of it.
Steiner left for Weimar in the autumn of 1890. After Mailänder’s death (1905), some former Mailänder pupils changed over to Steiner (Günther Wagner, the Pollak couple, Paula Stryczeck, Baron Hofmann and perhaps others of whom we know nothing so far). It is probably through these former pupils that the knowledge of Mailänder has reached Steiner. He also tried to imitate Mailänder as a teacher in many ways, but his esoteric teachings (GA 267, 268) are linked to Blavatsky and Kerning, but not to Mailänder.
But I know that Samuel Robinson has some theories about the connection between Steiner and Mailänder. We will have to wait for his upcoming book on “The Rosicrucian Fraternities in the Wake of J.B. Kerning and Alois Mailander” to quench our curiosity.
Christine Eike
________________________
[1] Richard Cloud: The True Identity of the Elder Brother of Rudolf Steiner Revealed, 2017 https://pansophers.com/dem-m-revealed/
Richard Cloud: The Secret Rosicrucian Adept Alois Mailander, 2018
https://pansophers.com/alois-mailander/
[2] Erik Dilloo-Heidger: Alois Mailänder. 44 Briefe an Gustav Meyrink, 2020
Erik Dilloo-Heidger und Christine Eike: Alois Mailänder. Seelenlehre-Formenlehre, 2021
Samuel Robinson: Alois Mailander: A Rosicrucian Remembered, 2021
[3] See: https://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de/title/BV045389925 and https://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de/title/BV045387607
[4] They are today kept in the Rudolf Steiner archives in Dornach. They were found by the archivist Martina Maria Sam in the estate of Emil Bock in 2021 (Nachlass Bock, RSA 111). Emil Bock (1895-1959) was writing about Rudolf Steiner (Studien zu seinem Lebensgang) in the last years of his life, used these letters from Mailänder to Hübbe-Schleiden at the time, amongst other things, and even quoted parts of them. Probably he got them through Paula Hübbe-Schleiden, from his estate. Then these letters disappeared, nobody knew what had become of them for years, they were not in his official estate in Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen (https://archivfuehrer-kolonialzeit.de/nachlass-wilhelm-hubbe-schleiden-titel). Erik Dilloo-Heidger tried intensely to find them and asked about them at different places. Then, at last, Martina Maria Sam discovered them while writing about Alois Mailänder herself. See Martina Maria Sam: Der «Bund der Verheißung» um Alois Mailänder und seine Bedeutung für die frühe theosophische Bewegung in Deutschland. In: Archivmagazin. Beiträge aus dem Rudolf Steiner Archiv, Nr. 11 | Basel 2021.
[5] Leiningen-Billigheim, the son of Kerning’s direct disciple joined two of Mailänder’s circles, with Friederich Eckstein and Gustav Meyrink, which is how Mailänder got to know the oral tradition. According to Samuel Robinson’s book, Alois Mailänder: A Rosicrucian Remembered, Mailänder drew his Baptism of the Blood from Jane Lead, who described the skin signs as the “dying marks” of spiritual rebirth.
[6] Cod_Ms_W_Huebbe_Schleiden_1013_18 Diary 1896 Page 17
[7] “Es gibt keinen größeren Schrecken, als eine Masse Menschen, die einem verehren“. Letter in the Bock archive. See Marita Maria Sam ibid page 110
[8] https://archive.org/details/manshighestpurpo032199mbp; Meyrink´s Die Verwandlung des Blutes was found in his bequest but later published in “Fledermäuse”, 1992
[9] Auch Helena Blavatsky hatte gesagt, dass es heute in Deutschland nur einen Eingeweihten gebe und der lebe in Kempten. Er gehöre aber nicht zu ihrer Schule. Rolf Speckner: Friedrich Eckstein als Okkultist, 2014, page 10. Speckner does not say where and when she said it, but since it places Mailänder in Kempten, it must have been before the end of 1886, when he moved.
[10] Ibid page 110
[11] Letter to Hübbe-Schleiden 18 February 1887. See Martina Maria Sam ibid page 112 f. The original German, which is full of mistakes, reads: Ich bin in die indische theosophische Gesellschaft eingetreten, sowie auch Salomon, u zwar aus dem Grund, weil ich sowie Salomon uns ja schon längst überzeugend von dieser Lehre ausgesprochen haben. In der großen Hauptsache stimt sie mit der unserigen Lehre überein. Es gibt ja nur eine Wahrheit u. dieselbe ist Gott, um sie aber erkenen zu lernen, muß man praktisch arbeiten u dieses lehrt uns Jesus Kristus u lehrt uns die indische Theosophie. – Auch der budahistische Katechismus hat sehr viel beigetragen zu diesem Schritt. Auch habe ich in Amerika mehrere, die Glieder der indischen Gesellschaft sind, u. die sich viel lieber leiten u. führen laßen von mir, weil ich selbst Mitglied dieser Gesellschaft bin. Mein Grundsatz ist alles zu prüffen u. das Beste zu behalten, den ich bin im Glauben ganz der Alte geblieben aber vieles von der indischen Lehre ist Weisheit u. diese ists die ich anerkenne.
[12] Martina Maria Sam ibid page 114. The German: Doch mit den Leitern, so schreibt er später, hätten sie «nichts zu schaffen», denn «wir suchen nicht die Persönlichkeiten, sondern wir sind nur einverstanden mit dem Geist, den die indische Lehre beseelt. Die Frau Blawazki sowie der Oberst Olkot u. den ehemaligen Gesante Dr. Hartmann gilt uns gerade so viel als wie ein Münchner Milchweib die den Karren schiebt.»
[13] Cod_Ms_W_Huebbe_Schleiden_1013_16 Tagebuch 1896, page 4 f. Günther is Günther Wagner, Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden’s cousin, a leading member of the Theosophical Society, who became a personal student of Mailänder. Later he was a well-known student of Rudolf Steiner. E.S.T. stand for the Esoteric School of Theosophy and H. P. B. for Helen Petrovna Blavatsky.
[14] From the archive of Reg. Rat Ing. Lambert Binder in Vienna. Lambert Binder had collected texts about Meyrink, Müller-Edler had cooperaterd with Meyrink.
[15] Nun zum Schluss noch ein paar Worte über Mailänder. Gustav Meyrink (1868-1932) erzählte mir damals ungefähr Folgendes: Ich hatte vom 23-32ten Jahr einen Guru, d.h. einen einfachen, erleuchteten Webergesellen, zu dem sogar die Blavatsky (1831-91) mit dem Inder Bahij gepilgert kam. Ein Mann a la Jakob Böhme (1575-1624) …
[16] Caldwell, Daniel H.; The Writing of the Sacred Doctrine. Eine Chronologie. Tucson, Arizona 2015
[17] See for further information: Samuel Robinson: Alois Mailänder, ibid page 33
[18] Gustav Meyrink: Das grüne Gesicht 1916
[19] For more information on the issue see Samuel Robinson: Alois Mailander ibid page 60
[20] Martina Maria Sam ibid page 108
[21] Martina Maria Sam ibid page 105
