Lucy M. Boston, her birthday and her memoirs

The English novelist Lucy M. Boston, who is often known as L. M. Boston, was born on December 10th 1892. She was over 60 when her first book was published, and she lived to the age of 97.

She is of interest to me mainly because of her book An Enemy at Green Knowe. The enemy in the title is the scholar, black magician and demon-possessed witch Dr. Melanie Powers, who has been mentioned in passing in a few articles. This is the only book in which Lucy M. Boston writes at length about the battle between good and evil.

There is little in Lucy M. Boston’s life to explain where Melanie Powers and her very familiar characteristics and behaviour came from; unlike Nicholas Stuart Gray’s and Diana Wynne Jones’s witches, she was not based on the author’s mother: Lucy M. Boston’s mother was unhappy and neglectful, but not cruel and evil.

However, the magical house Green Knowe, whose name appears in the titles of her series of children’s fantasy books, is taken directly from Manor House, which was built by the Normans around the year 1130 and was her home for almost 50 years.

Manor House is still in the Boston family and is now open to the public. Maybe I will go to see it some time.

Perverse and Foolish

Lucy M. Boston’s autobiographical work Perverse and Foolish: A Memoir of Childhood and Youth describes her life up to the time of her marriage.

More wise words from Upton Sinclair

Upton Sinclair was just a name to me until very recently.

I now know that he produced some very insightful and inspirational material.

He could be a goldmine, so his writings are on the list to be investigated. In the meantime, a little research has found these very relevant quotations:

“I discover that hardly a week passes that someone does not start a new cult, or revive an old one; if I had a hundred life-times I could not know all the creeds and ceremonies, the services and rituals, the litanies and liturgies, the hymns...”

From The Profits of Religion: An Essay in Economic Interpretation (1918), Introductory, "Bootstrap-lifting".

He was speaking about American-style religious organisations, but his words apply to many other types of cult. There is no end to them, and many do indeed perform brain-washing ceremonies.

“He was burning with a sense of outrage. He had been tricked and made a fool of; he had been used and flung aside. And now there was nothing he could do — he was utterly helpless. What affected him most was his sense of the overwhelming magnitude of the powers which had made him their puppet; of the utter futility of the efforts that he or any other man could make against them. They were like elemental, cosmic forces; they held all the world in their grip, and a common man was as much at their mercy as a bit of chaff in a tempest.”

From Metropolis (1908)

Upton Sinclair could be speaking for many people who realise that they have been cheated, lied to and made a fool of and that there is nothing that they can do about it. They are helpless pawns; they are up against something huge, invulnerable, inexorable and remorseless.

This is a perfect description of how devastated some people feel when they realise that they have been used and destroyed by a cult or an energy vampire and there will be no justice and no compensation.

November 25th this year was the 50th anniversary of Upton Sinclair’s death.

A multi-level approach to finding explanations

When I am trying to understand certain phenomena and occurrences, my method is to start by considering the most obvious explanations. There is no need to assume occult influences or go into full conspiracy theory mode unless and until it is absolutely necessary!

If all the top-level possibilities I can think of are not relevant, if they are inadequate and insufficient to explain everything, if they are the symptoms as opposed to the cause, then I will move down a level to more subtle possibilities.

If these too do not provide a full and satisfactory explanation, I will go lower still.

For example, if someone acts unprofessionally and out of character and causes a lot of damage to the company they work for, I would first check for such personal factors as illness, money worries, family problems or a drink problem. I would then look at the employer and the job and to see whether they were tired from working very long hours, were living in fear of redundancy or had been promoted beyond their capabilities.

Criticism and the future Lord Voldemort

I have learned to recognise signs and symptoms of behaviour and scenarios commonly found in and associated with cults, cult leaders and cult members.

Now that I know what to look for, I can see examples everywhere. 

There is even some relevant material in the Harry Potter books: Lord Voldemort speaks and behaves like a cult leader.

The young Tom Riddle, Lord Voldemort to be, shows signs of what is to come. His response to criticism is very typical of the way people involved with cults react; I have encountered this reaction many times myself. 

Response to allegations and criticism

We need to be informed, balanced and objective and consider the source when deciding whether allegations involving cults and cult leaders are true or not. There are such things as revenge, spite and envy; people do lie and exaggerate; people do try to drag down or even destroy someone who is above them or sabotage the work of an organisation that is working to make the world a better place.

The reactions of the accused and their supporters to allegations and criticism may help us decide whether or not the claims are justified and true. Automatic dismissal and denial, ad hominem insults, counter-accusations and the attack-dog syndrome are all dead giveaways!

Tom Riddle and the rejected criticism

J. K. Rowling nails it when writing about the future Lord Voldemort and his first group of supporters.

Some further thoughts about Upton Sinclair’s proposition

The American novelist Upton Sinclair had this to say about the difficulty in getting through to people:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

The previous article expanded on this statement and listed some external factors that might be involved in addition to someone’s salary.

It is not just about employees and possible losses in the outer world: Upton Sinclair’s proposition can be applied to the inner world of many people when psychological factors are involved.

There may also be some unseen influences at work in the form of good and evil forces.

Some psychological factors

Psychological defence mechanisms may be at work in many cases where people just don’t or won’t get or accept an inconvenient, unwelcome truth. For example, we may try very hard but unsuccessfully to get through to someone that they need to take responsibility for their actions.

Upton Sinclair and the difficulty in getting through to people

The starting point for this article is the well-known proposition from the American novelist Upton Sinclair:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

While true up to a point, this seems both incomplete and partly off the mark.

In some cases there is a lot more than a salary at stake, and it may be less a matter of a man’s not understanding something than of his understanding it only too well but refusing to accept it or admit that he knows it.

If someone did accept or admit that they know and understand an inconvenient truth, they might be expected or forced to do something about it. This might entail taking a stand; it might mean the loss of their existing role and plan of action; it might mean the loss of acceptance, credibility, any chance of promotion and even their professional reputation.

Ignorance really is bliss in many cases.

Sinister and significant elements and scenarios

Previous articles contain many examples of elements, features, games, syndromes and scenarios that I am particularly interested in. Cases and references come from my own or someone else’s personal experience and from fiction or biographical works.

I see them as red flags, warning signs that unseen influences may be at work.

I thought it might be useful to compile a list of some of the most sinister and significant of these elements:  

-People benefitting from convenient and/or suspicious deaths;

-People getting things at other people’s expense;

-People inflicting terrible injuries of various kinds and carrying on as if nothing has happened, adding insult to injury by expecting their victims to play the ‘business as usual’ game too;

-People behaving unprofessionally and out of character;

- People playing the reversal game that is characteristic of evil. For example, behaving as if they were the victim when they are the victimiser and presenting black as white;

-The backfiring scenario, where people do not get what they wanted, planned for and expected because it all goes horribly wrong. They may even get the exact opposite of what they wanted; sometimes they lose what they already had;

-The fifth-rate travesty scenario, when what people get seems to them to be a very cheap copy of what they actually wanted;

-The time when jubilant people think that they are in at the start of something big and exciting, only for a time to come when they look back sadly, realising that that was as good as it got;

-The ‘all avenues closed’ scenario when people are forced onto what seems like the only path available, the only way out. This path often leads to something worse or even to destruction;

-The attack-dog syndrome;

-The sole supplier syndrome;

People of interest with big anomalies in their lives, the ‘good idea’ that results in suffering and the ‘as if’ game deserve a mention too.

When I see these elements in operation, I suspect that there is an energy vampire, a cult, a black occultist or a witch in the case; where relevant, I suspect that psychological black magic is at work.