Black Magic Rituals? Where?

[How Brown]

;) It remains to be seen whether RDS ever practiced necromancy.

Claiming that he used a talisman to subdue a witchdoctor can't cut it. That was a spin off of Haggard's "She" and an entertainment piece for PMG readers. Unless,of course, you believe in the veracity of black magic and that one can become invisible,attain super powers,or other perks....

Doubters are welcome to counter this....

Claiming that he watched Lytton and then was initiated into some secret order is not practicing black magic. Its joining a group. No mention of an actual ritual is specified in this all important liason with Lytton in 1859.

Doubters are welcome to counter this as well.....

The only reference to any sort of idiosyncracy that remotely looks like a "ritual" is the Cremers commentary on RDS' making little triangles with his hands.

Stephenson may well have known of the ways of the necromancer. Yet,there is no proof he actually did practice black magic.

I know the ways of the cabdriver. I used to be one at night...however,I do not practice cabdriving.

So...is the Lytton initiation the only tangible account of a necromantic experience in my favorite Ripper subject and suspect's life?

You tell me !

[Peter Birchwood]

Properly speaking, a necromancer is someone who speaks to the dead and more importantly, gets replies! Donston was never that; indeed I suspect that there hasn't been a true necromancer in the UK since Edward Kelley.
Most if not all Victorian and Edwardian occult groups were for middle-class gentlemen to get away from their wives for an evening, wear funny clothes and pretend to themselves that they were doing something rather naughty. No one within recorded history has been proven to raise a demon. Donston falls into the class of people who for their own reasons are not content with doing practical and worth-while things but instead wish to impress friends and colleagues with what they could do if they wanted.

Maybe Donston got involved with HPB because he liked Mabel Collins? Perhaps, even he might have had thoughts about theosophy. However, as far as we can see, his main interest was the cosmetics company which seems eventually to have crashed.

If Donston was the Whitechapel Murderer (and I do not believe that he was) then he acted through his own perverse impulses rather than through some idea of making an occult sign. Although there have been a few individuals (technically called "nuts") who have used a certain amount of occult ritual in their killings, for the most part those rituals derive from Crowley and his admirers: the Process, and others. In 1888 although occultist societies were beginning, they were of the social rather than demonic sort.

[admin tim]

Insofar as these 'black magic rituals' are concerned, I have long been curious about them, as all 'magick' that I have ever seen referenced has followed a prescribed set of rules or formulae that are well-known by those who practice such deviltry.

Here too I have come up dry in my searching, and I have found, as you may know, references to raising demons, love spells, evil spells, attaining wealth, etc., but nothing which requires ritual deaths similar to those murders observed in the autumn of 1888. If RDS or some other magus/perpetrator was indeed practicing 'black magic', I wonder just what it was that he was trying to accomplish.

If this was 'African' magic as has been suggested by one of RDS's foremost champions, then I wouldn't expect prostitutes to be involved in any fashion - why on earth should they since prostitutes/prostitution would have been virtually unknown in Africa? Surely this would have instead involved use of animals, small children/babies, or other fetishes and such rituals can be observed today in practice by one cult or another. Witness the pyramids of dead cats occasionally found in remote rural areas, the sporadic desecration of graves for human bones, and the bizarrely abused corpses of sacrificed babies or children that are occasionally mentioned in the news.

However, none of these observed rituals, or any others that I have been able to locate, involve body parts or internal organs of prostitutes. Could this have been a 'homegrown' ritual conceived by RDS or someone else? This too seems unlikely, as if there was no prior 'practical' reference to it, how could one have any confidence that it would work as intended? The potential reward would not seem to be at all commensurate with the terrific risks involved here.

Cabalistic symbology is well-known - the pentagrams, triangles, vesica piscis, and others - and the various spells, incantations, and rituals are likewise well documented . Could there be rituals that are NOT known or recognized either by laymen or occult enthusiasts - such as one intended to give its invoker eternal life? Could such rituals be so obscure that there is no mention of them - period - on the worldwide web? I suppose there must be such 'secrets' around - surely the Masonic rituals are not fully documented for just anyone to see, for example. but how on earth would D'Onston get wind of them if they were so obscure or secret? For someone to be privy to this kind of secret in the Masons, one would have to be of a really advanced degree. As Howard has reiterated, there is NO hard evidence that D'Onston ever practiced 'black magic', let alone was of an advanced standing in the arcane arts.

Of course, the occult has always had a large following, and there must have been others besides RDS in London, the world's capital in 1888, that would have been of equal or greater ability in matters of 'black magic'. But such persons are normally secretive by nature - with very few exceptions to this rule, such as Anton LaVey(sp?) - and it is a certainty that the general public would not know of them or their habits. Here, I think, we have only D'Onston's own words about himself, an endorsement that is worth nothing in the end.

W.T. Stead may or may not have had good reasons to believe that RDS was JTR - if he really did believe that, but judging by today's MSM (mainstream media), his type has always been quick to jump on a story without paying any too close attention to its credentials - witness the recent downfall of Dan Rather, who wanted to believe so badly that George Bush was guilty as had been charged by some partisan nut case. And he knew that this charge would be BIG news, whether true or not.

Anyway, the more one scratches at D'Onston, the less sure one feels about his candidacy as JTR. The assumed murder, dismemberment, and disappearance of Ann Deary, which, I think, has now been proven to be entirely false, has pretty much taken away any vision of D'Onston as a furtively violent man capable of feats such as the Whitechapel Murders. He did apparently talk a good game, but was there any substance beneath the facade? We may never know for sure, but the trend is certainly to the contrary.

Your thoughts and opinions?

[How Brown]

Dear Mr.B:

In your post below you mention:


"Maybe Donston got involved with HPB because he liked Mabel Collins?"

Allow me to state that in inclusion to the absence of "black magic ritualism" in the case of Stephenson, there is likewise no proof that HPB and RDS ever had social intercourse.

Mabel Collins was on the outs with Blavatsky by the time Stephenson and Collins first united after their exchange of letters in 1889. It goes without saying that had Stephenson known Collins before 1889 ( they got cozy in 1890...) Stephenson would have definitely known Collins from her position with Blavatsky ( Madame Blavatsky's main draw was Collins to the Theosophic Society and was considered a "right hand man", so to speak, to the obese guru ). Since they had not met before 1889, it is more likely that Stephenson did not know Mabel Collins,as he surely would have known her or at least, of her,from her intimate and important status with HPB. Hence,its equally likely that RDS wasn't intimate with HPB. Its like swimming and wet...with HPB/Collins...and RDS. You can't have one without the other.

Here again,and not to sidetrack the thread,its important that an item such as the HPB/RDS connection be fully examined. Both served,I'm sure you know,with Garibaldi,but at different and distant times from each other. There is no evidence other than a mutual interest in the offbeat that links HPB and RDS yet. If there was,we'd know by now.

Again,I welcome any counter argument to what I have stated.

Despite these issues,I still think that Stephenson could have been the Ripper. Not based on black magic,but for some soul sickness or mental issue.

Tim mentions the absence of information regarding the patterns and symbolism available. Another telling blow to the vesica pisces is that along with its application in the WM, not one single person in the entire world of black magic or satanism ( and they have seen the layout as described ) has ever or will ever state that this design of pacivity would be remotely close to being represented. It makes no sense. A profaned cross,yes...a sign of passivity,no.

Not to "pick on" the vesica pisces,but other patterns may well not be "there" either. Dan Norder,for one off the top of my head,has shown the way we "see" patterns into things in a 2004 Ripper Notes article worth reading. I was interested in a double triangle layout ( Nichols to Chapman to Stride......and then Stride to Eddowes back to Nichols ),since RDS did make hand gestures like a triangle. But that idea may be no better than a vesica pisces or arrow or any other pattern ever conjured up.

I'll leave The Distance Theory ( how far apart the first four murders were from each other and how they are spaced on the map of the East End and eliminating Kelly from the list of victims, as it may have been a murder outside any intended design if we assume that there was an intended design ) for later. In that,there is a possible connectivity. To what remains to be seen.

I could claim that the Kelly murder had to be "moved back" from its originally intended position on the map for whatever reason....closer to a point between Nichols and Eddowes....and say that this was either a giant "X" or a profaned cross...but you have to move Kelly closed to the center to achieve it. In the vesica pisces idea,victims have to be moved to acheive what we are required or desired to see.

I agree with you Peter...most of those men were bored and did probably want to get out and smoke a pipe in peace with the boys...sorry ladies !:smoker:

Any other ideas and comments ?

[admin tim]

Ah, I get it now. Look to the present for a clue to the past.....