Another look at Madeleine L’Engle’s Zachary Grey

I thought at the time that my article about Zachary Grey contained all the relevant material of interest; I have since found a few more significant points and incidents and noticed some intriguing connections.

The bad boys are a bad omen

In The Moon By Night, Vicky Austin and her family stay in a series of camping grounds as they travel across the USA. 

There are some unpleasant incidents during these stopovers. The first one happens just before Zachary Grey comes into Vicky’s life, and it could be interpreted as a bad omen.

Vicky feels edgy and rather scared when they arrive at one campsite, and these feelings are soon justified. As Vicky and her family are eating a meal, a car drives by very fast. It passes them again, and one of the occupants throws a glass bottle out of the window; it hits the side of the Austins' station wagon, shattering with a sound like a bomb going off. The car comes back again, and a gang of young ‘hoods’ gets out. One of them is wearing black trousers and a black leather jacket, a cheap copy of what Zachary Grey often wears.

Vicky’s father gets rid of them, but not long afterwards the Austins hear a vehicle approaching and are afraid that the gang of thugs is returning. This time, it is Zachary Grey and his parents. This is Zachary’s first appearance in Vicky’s life.

The black bear is a bad sign

I described Vicky’s symbolic encounter with a skunk and its connection with a letter from Zachary in the first article; this time around I noticed an incident involving a black bear.

Soon after meeting Zachary for the first time, Vicky walks around the campsite with him and hears his cynical and pessimistic philosophy of life. Later that evening, while walking back from the wash-room, she sees something dark behind her. At first she thinks it is one of the gang, but then realises that it is an animal, probably a bear. Her family don’t believe that she saw a bear.

Twice during the night they are wakened by a loud crash: something keeps knocking their ice-box over. In the morning they see large paw marks everywhere. The ranger tells them that it was a black bear and it was looking for food.

Cult members and the superiority syndrome

Yet another warning to people who are involved with cult members:

They consider themselves to be superior to anyone who is not part of their organisation.

It is standard practice for members of various groups to be told that they are superior to outsiders. This helps to enforce solidarity and institute an 'us and them' mentality.

This is something that acquaintances, friends and family of members of cults and cult-like organisations often have to deal with. All they can usually do is try to understand why the members believe it: trying to discuss the superiority syndrome or telling them a few home truths is useless if not counter-productive.

The Superiority Syndrome

Sometimes cult members are told that they are superior 'just because'; sometimes the stated reason is that they are part of an elite group of people who have left the mass of humanity behind and devoted their lives to a cause.

They are special because they have access to secret knowledge, knowledge that the herd would never be able to deserve, understand or make use of.

Sometimes members are told that they are superior because of their godliness and righteousness, which makes them the only people who will be saved from Hell. Everyone else is a lost soul.

Perhaps they think that they are superior because of what they sacrifice and what they endure.

It may also be that they are told that outsiders are inferior, tainted and unenlightened; outsiders live in the outer darkness while members reside in the inner light. The members have gone where the under-privileged outsiders are unable, unwilling and unworthy to follow.

Cults, occultists and Stella Gibbons: Part I

I have both learned about and been reminded of many things since I produced the article about white and black magic in the books of Stella Gibbons. 

While re-reading her biography recently, I saw something that prompted me to take another look at her novel The Shadow of a Sorcerer. I noticed a lot more relevant material this time around and made some new connections, so there is something to add to what I have previously written about this book.

First, what I saw that gave rise to this article:

Stella Gibbons and Aleister Crowley

When I first read Out of the Woodshed by Reggie Oliver, I was mainly interested in the details of Stella Gibbons’s early life. Much of the other information didn’t register, and I overlooked two references to infamous people. This time around, their names jumped out at me. One was Adolf Hitler - his connection with Stella Gibbons has been described elsewhere - and the other was the occultist Aleister Crowley. 

Her nephew tells us that Stella Gibbons once saw Crowley outside the Café Royal in central London. I don’t know the date, but guess that it was in the 1930s. 

Her impression was unfavourable. When her nephew asked hopefully if this was because of Crowley’s air of supernatural malignancy, she said no, what repelled her was that he had the look of a man who was desperately trying to attract attention. 

This is spot on. Such people have forfeited their inner sources of sustenance and are often disconnected and empty, so they need to live off others to fill the void. They may be prisoners and hostages too, desperate for someone or something to save them. 

After reading about this encounter, I remembered Esmé Scarron, the evil occultist in The Shadow of a Sorcerer, and wondered whether Stella Gibbons had used Crowley as the inspiration for this character. Her book was published in 1955, so there were many years after the sighting in which she could have talked to people and done some research.

Whatever the source, Esmé Scarron is a person of great interest.  

Cult members and the attack-dog syndrome

Here is yet another warning about what can happen when dealing with cult members.

They may automatically attack, with varying levels of viciousness, people who say or do something unacceptable to them, their ideology or their organisation. They may behave like attack dogs, sometimes just growling or snapping at people and sometimes going straight for the jugular.

I have already written about the phenomenon known as the attack-dog syndrome in this article, but want to add something to my original ideas and go into the topic more deeply and in greater detail.

Games, tricks and techniques

When cult members don’t want to talk about something or listen to what people are trying to tell them, they will use one or more of the standard techniques in their repertoire.

It is all automatic, and the goal is to silence people.

For example, cult members often avoid people who ask awkward questions and even cut off contact completely; they immediately change the subject when someone raises an unwelcome issue, ignoring what was said and talking very quickly about something else; they use robotic slogans and repeat official propaganda instead of having a real discussion; they use denial and dismissal to close the subject.

I have experienced all this for myself: “I am very busy”; “We must make sacrifices for the cause”; “They are lying”; “He is a traitor”; “You shouldn’t take any notice of these rumours” and much more of the same.

The use of these techniques demonstrates what sort of person the recipient is dealing with. An uncontrolled, on-the-level decent human being does not behave like this; people who habitually play these games may be prisoners and hostages. And what does the need to play them say about the cause and people that are being promoted and defended?

Georgette Heyer and Stella Gibbons: some coincidences

For me, even the best of Georgette Heyer’s books are, or rather were, mere escape material and comfort reading. I have not read any of them for a very long time as they have lost much of their earlier appeal. I don’t remember seeing anything in any of them that would be relevant to the themes of this blog.

Stella Gibbons’s novels are primarily a source of material for articles about unseen influences: there are references to Stella Gibbons and her books in a few articles on here.

These two novelists have more elements of their lives in common than I would have expected, considering how very different their novels are. I looked at the major similarities and differences in their lives and personalities to see if I could see any patterns and detect any unseen influences at work. Although I found much fascinating and informative material, most of it is not very relevant to this blog. I did find a few interesting coincidences however. 

It is customary to leave the best till last, but I want to start with the most bizarre and unexpected material that I found while researching the two authors:

Novels and the Nazis
It is quite a coincidence that the names of both writers were known to the Nazi regime - for very different reasons.

Georgette Heyer had some of her books banned in Nazi Germany, whereas one of Stella Gibbons’s was translated into German and presented to Adolf Hitler!