Strindberg and his cult-pushing secret friend: Part III

There is more than one way of looking at the story of August Strindberg and his secret friend.

Not only can we see it as a falling out between a cult member and the person he targeted for cultivation and recruitment, we can also treat it as an occult war between two black magicians. Either way, we have two men quarrelling in a very uncivilised and low-class way.

These scenarios or interpretations of events are not mutually exclusive; they all have relevance to the case. This final article in the series will cover these different dimensions of Strindberg’s story.

The cult member and the target

The secret friend’s persistence is sinister. Surely a normal, decent person would have realised long ago that Strindberg was just not buying Madame Blavatsky and her ideology and given up trying to sell to and recruit him.  He sounds just like one of those Multi-level Marketers who won’t take ‘no’ for an answer! 

Strindberg says that this man was very anxious for him to give a good opinion of Blavatsky’s book. His reaction to Strindberg’s criticism is a classic, textbook example of a cult member’s behaviour when the cult leader or the ideology is criticised or someone refuses to join after being targeted.

So why exactly was this man so determined to recruit Strindberg and why did he react the way he did when he finally failed?

I get the impression that some cult members are controlled - or even possessed - and under orders; I sense fear in addition to anger: they behave as if they will be terribly punished if they don’t complete their assignments successfully. They will pay for it if the prey escapes.

The two uncivilised men

Neither man comes out well here.

The secret friend may have been the sort of person who becomes overwhelmed with murderous psychotic fury and outrage when he does not get what he wants from someone, but Strindberg met him on the same low level.

Such behaviour is a dead giveaway.

It is the sign of an inferior, infantile, uncivilised person and a weak personality to become insane with rage when criticised, challenged, contradicted, thwarted or threatened. It is much better to build one’s personal power and be assertive, to negotiate and calmly state one’s position in the normal way than it is to bombard the offender with threats and ad hominem insults and accusations as the secret friend did.

The secret friend would have done better to deal with the points that Strindberg raised about Madame Blavatsky’s book than to attack and threaten him personally; Strindberg would have done better just to ask his secret friend to respond to the criticism and ask him why he was reacting so strongly to it.

Strindberg could have just calmly enquired why it was so important to the secret friend for him to give a positive opinion and become a theosophist. He could have said that even if he had been thinking of joining, which he was not, his friend’s behaviour would have completely put him off the idea!

Even John Masefield’s Little Maria knew how to deal with an attempt to recruit her for dubious purposes:

“’If your job were honest,’ I said, ‘you’d say what it is. It can’t be nice, or it wouldn’t have you in it.’”

The two black magicians

Strindberg used black magic to make his little girl fall ill; he said that his secret friend was also involved with black magic – more about this in a future article.

It is not just ordinary low-level people who cannot negotiate or hold a civilised debate who get angry and make threats when they don’t get what they want: there are many accounts of warring black occultists behaving as Strindberg and his secret friend did. They too react with primitive violence; they too threaten to launch attacks on another dimension.

The secret friend’s hurling of excommunications and intention to appeal to higher authorities and summon Strindberg to appear before an occult tribunal may seem ridiculous or even pathetic to outsiders, but some people take these things seriously.

What was Strindberg’s crime exactly, and what right did the secret friend have to order him to be tried for it? Who did he think he was? Were the people on the tribunal on the same low level as the secret friend? What right did they have to try anyone? Strindberg could have calmly asked these questions rather than make threats of his own.

No victim in the case

While the secret friend is typical of the inferior and sometimes dangerous if not downright evil people that some people involved with the dark side of the occult attract into their lives, when Strindberg describes his secret friend he could sometimes be describing himself. They reacted identically with threats of violent occult retaliation when angered for example.

Perhaps unseen influences brought them together. Perhaps the secret friend was a mirror and a messenger. Perhaps each man was caught in the other’s psychic trap.

Even though Strindberg may have projected imaginary attributes onto his secret friend, he still benefitted from this relationship in some ways. The material and moral support and opportunity to discuss metaphysical matters and bare his soul he received from the man he perceived as a benevolent father figure and mentor outweighed the superiority and criticism - for a while.

It seems to me that there is no real victim here.

More to the story?

These articles are based entirely on material from Strindberg’s Inferno; his melodramatic, paranoid and scattered account is one-sided and not necessarily the whole, or true, story.

There may be further relevant information to be found elsewhere: I have already learned that Strindberg was six years older than his father-figure secret friend and mentor!

If I do come across anything really interesting and relevant, there will be a follow-up article.

In the meantime, Vernon Howard’s wise words are worth remembering:

“When meeting anyone you should ask yourself: ‘what does he want that I must not give?’”