Dabbling in the Occult

Continuing with the Rabbit Hole motif of The Beatles and the Occult, let's spotlight a Beatles artifact from the time of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was first published in 1968 in the Official Beatles Biography by Hunter Davies. This scan was borrowed from Nothing Is Real.



The document appears to have at least three sets of scribbles, each most likely done with a different writing instrument. There is a list of songs, probably a suggested sequence of tracks for the Sgt. Pepper album. Underneath "Fixing A Hole" is a partially scratched out item that was interpreted by Ted Goranson in a post on the Newsgroup Rec Music Beatles as "Lacie." Goranson has observed numerous connections between "Alice In Wonderland" and the music of The Beatles, and he believes both are strongly related to the Occult. Jojo shared a reformatted version of Goranson's post on NIR recently. The significance of "Lacie" is that it is an anagram for "Alice." As evidenced by the replies to Goranson's RMB post, not everyone agrees that it says "Lacie." It could easily be "Lucie." John would later use that name for the song "Bring On The Lucie (Freda Peeple)" on his Mind Games album. There is no doubt that the scribble referred to "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds," which certainly has connections to "Alice In Wonderland."

Lucy and Alice both seem to have a strong relationship with the Tarot. At the beginning of their respective journeys, Lucy has marmalade skies and Alice grabs a marmalade jar. There was an impressive marmalade sky in the recent debut video by wizardofpaul which has already disappeared from YouTube.



In addition to the list of titles and various notes that seem to apply to the structure of the song "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds," there is another interesting element on the document from the Hunter Davies book. It appears to say:

Brotherhood of Light
Doctring of Kabalis
Cop. 1935
by
Elbert Benjamin
Serial No 48
L.N. Fowler & Co.
Tudor St. London EC4



The book title isn't exactly correct, but there was a series of "lessons" published under the collective title "Brotherhood of Light" by Elbert Benjamine (AKA C.C. Zain). The texts deal with the Occult and Astrology.


Benjamine reported that he communicated with the dead from an early age. Like Aleister Crowley, he was an avid mountain climber. The books in his series dealt with such subjects as Tarot, Masonry and Spiritual Alchemy. His writings serve as the foundation for The Church of Light.



There is one more interesting detail about Elbert Benjamine. His date of birth was December 12, 1882.