Victoria Woodhull’s Eugenical Christianity (or How Jack the Ripper Found Jesus)
Some months ago, I authored an 8 part series introducing the real story behind the Whitechapel murders of 1888. If you read those articles (or my third volume of Revenge of the Mystery Cults), you might have been surprised to discover that the ‘Jack the Ripper’ murders were directly connected to an occult agenda to create a new world religion driven by a New Babylon centered in a reconstructed Solomon’s Temple in Palestine.
This story linked the Ripper murders with the Esoteric Section of Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society, the newly founded Hermetic Order of Golden Dawn and the Freemasonic Quatuor Coronati Lodge overseen by Sir Charles Warren, King Edward VII and Sir Walter Besant- brother in law of Annie Besant. As outlined in The British Empire’s Gnostic Revival of Scientific Paganism and a New World Religion, Besant was both a leading Fabian Socialist, eugenicist as well as leader of the new Theosophical Society after the death of Blavatsky in 1891.
One final chapter of this story has never been told which deals with the key figure of Robert D’Onston Stephenson… who made a strange decision to convert to Christianity after the gory affair of the Ripper murders were finished.
How the Ripper found Gnostic Jesus
Not much is known of the life of Robert D’Onston Stephenson after his short collaboration with Theosophists Mabel Collins and Vittoria Cremers came to an end in 1891.
Although it is believed that he lived until at least 1917, he nearly disappeared from public view, publishing only a handful of articles after 1893 and one book published under his pseudonym ‘Roslyn D’Onston’ dubbed ‘The Patristic Gospels’ in 1904. The name Roslyn as a pseudonym was selected in reference to Rosslyn chapel… a 15th century chapel reputedly built to serve the occult underground of former Templars after 1314 and which is some believe houses vast catacombs housing a storehouse of artifacts and other occult secrets.
After his bloody role within the Ripper ritual, and after his strange period living with the two Theosophical witches Mabel Collins and Vittoria Cremers (both of whom went on to work within the inner sanctum of Aleister Crowley’s Thelemic orders), D’Onston made a very strange life changing decision.
In 1893, upon meeting the American feminist, channeler, free love advocate and eugenicist, Victoria Woodhull in London, D’Onston was so bewitched by the grace of her persona that he decided to convert from Satanism to Christianity.
From 1893 until his death over twenty years later, D’Onston is reputed to have become a devout Christian, even authoring an original translation of the New Testament Gospels from the original Greek in 1904 which are celebrated by scholars to this day.
As a mark of gratitude to Woodhull for helping him see the light of Jesus, he authored several articles praising Woodhull with the most famous being ‘Brief Sketches of the Life of Victoria Woodhull’.
Writing under his pseudonym Roslyn D’Onston, the newly-Christianized Robert (Roslyn) D’Onston wrote adoringly of the woman who brought him to the light of Jesus.
Watering the Seeds of a New Age
He opened his essay by describing the Chaldean Priests of the East who came to the newborn Jesus in Bethlehem which ushered in a new age for humanity, D’Onston then celebrates Victoria Woodhull as the new “Virgin mother” of a New Age then being born:
“In the shifting of the scene from East to West the old lines have not been abandoned. It is still the Virgin Mother-virgin in mind and spirit, while mother in body-who is to "have the pre-eminence." Other women have paved the way for the Annus Dominae-the year of our lady. It is not necessary to mention their names. They must decrease while she will increase. The gestation period is over. The new birth began in 1893. The travail pains are past; the nativity passes into Epiphany.
NIKH-Victoria! The name is prophetic. Already it is on the lips of the vanguard. Soon it will echo all along the line.”
Within his strange 1893 homage, D’Onston continues to speak of Woodhull in messianic terms, while demonstrating his proof of her divinity through an assessment of palms, astrological chart, and bloodline (which he traced back to the royal house of Robert the Bruce- patron of the Templars in the early 14th century).[1]
Speaking of her grandfather, Thomas Hamilton D’Onston writes: “Thomas Hamilton was a direct descendent in a straight line of Lord Hamilton and the Princess Mary, daughter of King James II, from which couple also descend the Dukes of Hamilton. James II descended from King Robert I. (Robert Bruce), of Scotland. Therefore, it is evident Victoria C. Martin shares the blood not only of the ducal houses of Hamilton and Sutherland, but of the royal line of Stuart and the Bruce: and is, by consequence, entitled to quarter the ancient royal arms of England upon her shield.”
Towards the end of his long 1893 homage to this divine priestess, D’Onston writes of the esoteric ‘secret teachings’ knowable only to an inner elite behind the new gospel transmitted to the world through Woodhull in the following phrase:
“That she has a mission from on High, that she has a new message to mankind, which she has not yet herself fully received or understood, is as certain as that she herself exist. But, whether the new gospel-never even hinted at hitherto in any of her writings or speeches-will be communicated to the world, or whether it will be (for a period, at all events) reserved as esoteric truth to be confided only to the chosen few, to the initiated souls who are now and for all time emancipated and partakers of "the Kingdom," time alone can tell. She herself knows not yet.”
With such high accolades from one so prolific as Robert (Roslyn) D’Onston, chief apostle of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton and leading dark light of Bulwer-Lytton’s occult revival, it is worth asking: ‘Who exactly IS this Victoria Woodhull, what are her ‘esoteric truths’ and why should she merit such high praise?”
Victoria Woodhull: Sketches of the Life of a High Priestess
Born in Ohio in 1838 to Annie and Reuban ‘Buck’ Claflin, Victoria Woodhull and her sisters were groomed through their earliest childhood and teenage years in a peculiar setting.
Her mother had been a devoted follower of the Austrian hypnotist and occultist Anton Mesmer, and leading member of the Spiritualist Movement in America, and her father had been a prolific snake oil salesman touring the USA selling remedies to material and spiritual diseases.
Both parents put their children to work, with Victoria and her younger sister Tennessee trained to carry out fortune telling, magnetic healing, palm reading, clairvoyance (speaking to the dead), and according to biographers, prostitution.
Like the Fox Sisters who emerged as leading spiritualist icons in 1848, the Claflin family made their wealth touring their spirit-channelling children across America.
By the end of the Civil War, Victoria’s fame as a necromancer increased as she began hearing the voices of such notable spirits as Napoleon Bonaparte and her dominant Daemon Demosthenes.
Victoria proclaimed that Demosthenes’ ghost had directed her to usher in a new age, and that to carry out her task, she must become a leading Priestess of the spiritualists first and then the American republic itself.
Woodhull’s channelling of the figure of Demosthenes is significant for this story due to a little-known connection to the first secret society set up in Yale in 1833 called ‘The Skull and Bones’. As the name implies, the organization’s emblem features a skull and crossbones (i.e. Templar symbols) and the number 322 BC.
The number is a direct reference to the Athenian politician Demosthenes who died in 322 BC and who’s efforts to incite Athen’s revolt against Philip of Macedon gave Persia the excuse it needed to unleash a western invasion of Greece as part of a larger effort to create a ‘Western Persian Empire’ using Philip of Macedon as a marcher lord. While this plan was defeated by Philip’s son Alexander the Great, the elaborate plan became a template for future imperial machinations over the ensuing two and a half millennia.
The First Oracles on Wall Street
To attain those high ambitions which Demosthenes supposedly envisioned for her, Victoria would need to gain financial resources and fame.
These two tasks were accomplished by the fortunate intervention of one Cornelius Vanderbilt, rail and steam shipping tycoon, and, at the time, the richest men in American.
As the official story goes, Cornelius was so smitten by Victoria Woodhull and her young sister Tennessee, through whose channelling efforts Cornelius proclaimed to have vastly increased his fortunes on the stock market, the elderly tycoon became their financial patron for the coming years. Speculations that Cornelius enjoyed not only the fortune telling talents of young Tennessee but also her sexual favors.
Woodhull biographer Nova Atlas writes of the Vanderbilt-Woodhull sister relationship:
“Victoria brought Vanderbilt messages from his favorite son, who had died in the Civil War, and Tennie eased his pains with her healing hands. Soon she attended to Vanderbilt’s other physical needs by becoming his mistress. Vanderbilt may have chosen Tennie for his bedmate, but he admired Victoria’s intelligence.”[2]
When asked by a reporter how he acquired his fortunes gambling on the stock markets, Cornelius famously answered: “Do as I do. Consult the spirits.”
Vanderbilt showed his affection for the Woodhull sisters by sponsoring the first brokerage house on Wall Street run by woman in 1870.
Serving as spirit mediums (and possibly sacred prostitutes to the elite of New York) undoubtedly served their stock market careers well as many of their clients not only had access to invaluable insider information, but wielded so much wealth and political power that many of their financial decisions could cause markets to collapse or rise on a whim.
Propaganda, Communism and Spiritualism
It was also in 1870 that Cornelius also became the principal investor in Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly magazine also owned and managed by the Woodhull sisters for the next seven years.
This periodical became a dominant mouthpiece for women’s suffrage, free love, paranormal research, political commentary, socialism, spiritualism, sex education, Anglo-American friendship, finance, and of course, legalized prostitution.
It also became the primary propaganda vehicle for communism in America becoming the first organization to publish the Engels/Marx Communist Manifesto in the United States on December 30, 1871.
With her new fame and money in hand, Victoria quickly rose through the ranks of the American Association of Spiritualists, becoming elected the body’s president during its ninth annual convention in 1871.
During this convention, Woodhull’s grab for the presidency was supported by her fellow American spiritualist Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825-1875).
P.B Randolph’s Rosicrucian Sex Magic
According to Theosophist A.E. Waite, Paschal Beverly Randolph had been, like Robert D’Onston Stephenson, a leading disciple of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, and established the earliest Rosicrucian Order in the United States in the form of his 1858 Fraternitas Rosae Crucis and the first Rosicrucian Lodge in San Francisco in 1861.
In 1870, Randolph established two sister organizations: 1) the Brotherhood of Eulis and 2) the American branch of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor—the later of which had seen Helena Blavatsky and Colonel Henry Steele Olcott initiated that same year in the Luxor lodge of Cairo, Egypt.
As already established in volume two of The Revenge of the Mystery Cults, many members of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor would become founding members of the Theosophical Society in 1875. It was additionally proven in that book that core doctrines of the Rosicrucian brotherhood of the Brotherhood of Luxor as well as Paschal’s own contributions to sex-magic, Phallic cults and tantric rituals would become incorporated into the later Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn as well as the Ordo Templi Orientis- both of which would be led by the radical satanist Aleister Crowley.
The Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis and Misraim, established by Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi (a disciple of Giuseppe Mazzini), and led by Albert Pike’s lieutenant John Yarker would also initiate many members of the Theosophists, Golden Dawn and Brotherhood of Luxor while also incorporating the sex magic theories of Randolph for their works of ‘internal alchemy’.
Mrs. Satan Runs for President
The American Association of Spiritualists had been the principal instrument selected to destroy the traditional Christian fabric of the United States prior to the Civil War, although by 1871, as confidence in the American cause, and the ideals of a reasonable Creator were strong (having survived an existential wasting war for four years), it was becoming clear that the occult spiritualist new religion had to make some changes.
With her prestige as president of the new spiritualist religion, and her riches gained as the ‘oracle of Wall Street’, Woodhull used her new publishing house to announce her candidacy for the presidency of the United States in 1871 becoming simultaneously America’s first female candidate for the Presidency and leading spiritualist.
In the first issue of Woodhull and Claflin Weekly, Victoria took the liberty of unilaterally selecting African American statesman Frederick Douglass as her running mate in order to win over some legitimacy to her cause. Douglass had earned his fame as an escaped slave who rose to become one of America’s most cultured advocates of liberty, an advisor and friend of Abraham Lincoln.
While Douglass refused to accept Woodhull’s demands of collaboration, and never campaigned for her, he was billed by all of America’s newspapers as her running mate… a lie which has been maintained to this very day.
During the 1871 campaign, Woodhull’s elite patrons in Washington arranged for her to deliver an infamous speech to the U.S. House of Representatives titled her ‘Secession Speech’.
Woodhull’s fiery speech was nothing short of a declaration of war against the constitution itself, which only six years earlier had survived the largest onslaught against its existence through the dual efforts of British Freemasonic networks managing the Abolitionist north and pro-British Confederate south.
In her speech she pointed out the hypocrisies embedded in America’s founding documents which acknowledged all men being created equal on the one hand, while denying the right of women to vote on the other. Although her position on this topic showcased an authentic grievance that certainly demanded correction, her calling for the destruction of the Constitution itself went too far for many tastes.
Woodhull said:
“Under such glaring inconsistencies, such unwarrantable tyranny, such unscrupulous despotism, what is there left for women to do but to become the mothers of the future government?
There is one alternative left, and we have resolved on that. This convention is for the purpose of this declaration. As surely as one year passes from this day, and this right is not fully, frankly and unequivocally considered, we shall proceed to call another convention expressly to frame a new constitution and to erect a new government, complete in all its parts and to take measures to maintain it as effectually as men do theirs.
We mean treason; we mean secession, and on a thousand times grander scale than was that of the south. We are plotting revolution; we will overslough this bogus republic and plant a government of righteousness in its stead, which shall not only profess to derive its power from consent of the governed, but shall do so in reality.”
Woodhull embraced inflammatory rhetoric and controversy throughout her presidential campaign. At one particular rally at Steinway Hall in New York, she launched into a direct attack on traditional Christian concepts of marriage by saying:
“I am a Free Lover. I have an inalienable, constitutional and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or as short a period as I can; to change that love every day if I please, and with that right neither you nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere.”
With her highly publicized advocacy for free love, her threats to tear up the Constitution, and promotion of occultism, any legitimate arguments against the injustices faced by women were lost within the noise of her radicalism and many first generation suffragettes- including her former ally Susan B. Anthony, soon became her fiercest critics.
In 1872, a cartoon by Thomas Nast featured Woodhull bearing demonic wings and horns while holding a sign reading ‘Be saved by Free Love’ solidified her image as a force to be resisted by the population [see below].
Despite the fact that Woodhull’s ambitions to become the president failed miserably, with American Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant taking the White House in a landslide victory, her image as martyr and freedom fighter against hypocritical male culture was amplified by friendly press outlets associated with Cornelius Vanderbilt’s growing political machine in Washington and Tammany Hall in New York.