The Restoration of Eulis

Passing Thoughts on NYC's Pascal Beverly Randolph

Photograph I took in 2013 of Paschal Beverly Randolph’s birthplace

11 years ago on October 5, 2013 I decided to visit the birth site of one of my greatest esoteric influences: author, Paschal Beverly Randolph whose birthday is today. 

As I stood across the street from 70 Canal Street, in what is now China Town in Manhattan taking pictures, I found myself imagining what the neighborhood looked like back in the early 1800s before the nearby Manhattan bridge was constructed. I had been planning on visiting Paschal’s birth site for a few years, but I did not actually do it until that Saturday in 2013.

Sex Magic—which is arguably the most important element in the practical application of the spiritual sciences—has been exoterically suppressed by the three major Western religions which profess that bland sexual conservatism is the only true path to spiritual growth and eternal salvation. Fortunately, African American writer and occultist Paschal Beverly Randolph (October 8th 1825 – July 25th 1875) brought some semblance of sanity to the shores of North America when he taught the science of sex among many other disciplines which he is not as recognized for.

My photograph of the same building from a different angle.

Although born in New York City at a time when most African Americans were still prisoners of war, Randolph had an opportunity to travel to Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia to learn more about the arcane sciences. Randolph has been identified by biographers as a friend of Abraham Lincoln and is credited for bringing the Rosicrucian Order to the U.S.  I was initially exposed to Randolph and his teachings when I read The Stargate Conspiracy: The Truth about Extraterrestrial Life and the Mysteries of Ancient Egypt, in the summer of 1998. Since then, I have found him to be a source of great inspiration.

While his successors Aleister Crowley and Helena P. Blavatsky are FAR more recognized for their so-called teachings on Sex Magic, a basic overview of Randolph’s work would reveal that they culled just about everything they knew on the subject from him. Crowley event went so far as to bite Paschal’s slang by consistently using words like “Aethyr” which was a lousy attempt to mask his use of the Paschal’s use of the word “Aether.”

Randolph said in his book After Death: The Disembodiment of Man (1868) that the English transaltion of the Judeo-Christian account concerning the origin of the first true man on earth was not a complete rendering. Instead he taught that the original man “is spiritual, and like God, had no conceivable beginning.”  Mind you Randolph said this more than a half a century before another Libran, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, uttered similar sentiments.

It’s painfully ironic how Randolph, a prolific author and gifted spiritual scientist, born in the month of the Scales of Ma’at could have offered so much to the advancement of human understanding, yet such injustice is done to his legacy. Like Bob Marley said in his song “Misty Mourning,” “you give your more to receive your less.”

That narrative is changing as WAY more people are aware of his contributions to esoteric literature than when I started reading about him. Pay homage to a master who is being rediscovered by so many. Long live Paschal Beverly Randolph!