Finding St. Germain: Modern Sources Reveal Truth of Ancient Teachings
I had a notion that Ellen (not her real name) wanted me to start an organization that authentically contacted St. Germain and the masters. She had said numerous times that she would fund the project just as she had funded the early work of the Aquarian Foundation and Summit Lighthouse.
A wealthy benefactor interested in having a direct connection to St. Germain, Ellen had met Keith Rhinehart at one of his renowned séances where he famously would go into a “closet,” draw the curtain, and in the dark emit ectoplasm from his eyes, ears, and mouth (even with tape over them) that would form a shape of a master, or anyone the inquiring person was asking about. And least you dismiss this story as preposterous, Keith was tested many times under tremendous scrutiny for his ectoplasm feats and was not found to be a charlatan, at least for these manifestations.
In his youth, Keith was an amazing clairvoyant, and in the late sixty’s he began to “channel” St. Germain, a practice that he did until his death in 1999. He set up the Aquarian Foundation to support his work, and Ellen was one of his earliest supporters—both financially and spiritually. So it was no surprise to me when I first met Ellen at her beach house in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina that she would have in her possession some of the gems and crystals that Keith claimed were apported from his mouth, ears, and eyes. Keith believed that these treasures were part of a new “communion” with the spiritual world, and his followers, like Ellen, held them with deep reverence.
A mutual friend, Joanne Devaughn, introduced me to Ellen in the early seventies when I was stationed at Fort Bragg working for the Army Security Agency. They were both intrigued by his teachings which are still somewhat secret and quite developed, much like another spiritualists I would meet during this time through Ellen—Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the Summit Lighthouse.
When we met, Ellen was in her seventies. She was incredibly dynamic and formidable in her pursuits of spirituality, and was clairvoyant to a degree, which was easy for me to recognize having been clairvoyant since my birth. She studied everything—from Steiner to Blavatsky—so we had much to discuss. But as hard as I tried to help her get out of her materialistic thinking of spirituality, she was drawn to people like Keith Rhinehart and Mark Prophet who could make things manifest from the thin air into the physical world. Ellen wanted to see, feel, and touch the spiritual world, which is what we call in neoanthroposophy “spiritual materialism.”
For the next year, whenever I could get time off from the 101 Air Borne Rangers, I would visit Ellen at her beach house or at the main house on Eagle Island in Wilmington, North Carolina. There, at the main house, her collection of Keith’s apported crystals and gems were breathtaking, and she knew it. A rifle, which she was fully capable of using, leaned against the corner of the room, just in case anyone had mischievous intentions for her treasures.
Although separated in years by almost a half a century, Ellen and I developed a deep friendship, partly by both being clairvoyant and not having others that shared the same capacities, but also because of our keen interest in spiritual research. She had an extensive library of the public and secret teachings of the Aquarian Foundation and Summit Lighthouse, all of which she made available to me in return for my agreeing to consider her offer to reinvigorate the Aquarian Foundation after Keith came back from prison.
Keith, who was gay, was sentenced to five years in prison in 1965 for sodomy, charges that he protested during his three year sentence. Ellen and many others were outraged at the trumped up charges against Keith, but despite their support of Keith, he was a different man when he left Walla Walla, so Ellen thought. She felt that his capacities were greatly diminished. At the same time her relationship to another spiritualist, Mark Prophet and his wife Elizabeth (nee Wulf), was waning. It became extremely strained when Mark died, leaving Elizabeth as the head of Summit Lighthouse.
Ellen became confused about the two St. Germain teachings and began to question the whole issue of channeling St. Germain, which both teachings claimed to do, yet taught in diametrically opposed ways. Ellen wanted me to tell her if one or both of the two St. Germain channelers were untruthful or fraudulent. So she introduced me to Elizabeth.
An artist rendition of Keith Rhinehart
Not long after, I began to sense that Ellen wanted me to take over where she felt Keith and Clare were faltering. I agreed, at the least, to study every book she had in her library, and then to make a decision whether I would or would not carry on the St. Germain teachings that she felt so passionately about preserving.
It was this passion and pursuit of the masters, and in particular St. Germain, that drew Ellen to the works of Summit Lighthouse and the work of Mark Prophet who “channeled” the “Ascended Masters.” Ellen helped him publish his first book, Climb the Highest Mountain. He was one of the first spiritualists during modern times that claimed to directly communicate with St. Germain and the other masters.
Mark’s material was beautifully inspired, but not sufficiently grounded in the practical realm. Spiritual channeling was becoming the “fad” at that time after a long history of Spiritism in America. Later, he married Elizabeth, and they developed Summit Lighthouse into a world-wide organization that Elizabeth ended up transforming into the Church Universal and Triumphant. Elizabeth produced a tremendous amount of channeled material from all of the masters.
Through Ellen’s introduction, Elizabeth and I met numerous times and had tremendous discussions about the spirit. For a brief time, I offered my services to her organization. When I look back on those days now I see that I was swimming in a sea of spiritual opportunities. Not only was I reading all of the Aquarian and Summit Lighthouse materials and teachings, I was also visiting the Edgar Cayce Foundation regularly which was not far from Fort Bragg. Plus, through a serendipitous circumstance, I had come into possession of a dozen or so core Rudolf Steiner books and lectures that had been abandoned by an unknown person on the “reserved” shelf of a local bookstore, seemingly waiting for me to happen to drop in.
The spiritual pursuit of other philosophies gave me discernment and balance in Ellen’s world of Spiritism and séances. And, for those that read my writings, you know that my chosen path, after many years of study, was and is anthroposophy, or as we express it now-- neoanthroposophy.
It was that spiritual equanimity that gave me pause when Elizabeth Clare Prophet decided that the end-times had come and nuclear bombs would be dropped on America. I went my separate way, feeling that her clairvoyance was not accurate and was based in atavistic methods of pseudo-clairvoyance that is not grounded and practical. Before leaving, I talked with her at length about starting a Waldorf school for her followers who moved with her to Montana to prepare for the end-times.
But Elizabeth felt completely self-sufficient and needed no other clairvoyants to help her as she claimed the masters worked directly with her; although, I saw no evidence in this. About this time, Ellen, too, was losing interest in Elizabeth, hence her interest in recruiting me to her world of Spiritism and St. Germain.
I do believe that Mark Prophet was truly inspired and have found great truth and wisdom in his works which were clearly influenced by theosophy and the teachings of H. P. Blavatsky about the masters that she personally encountered and could contact at will from a distance.
It became vogue in theosophical circles to write stories about meeting the masters. Blavatsky herself told of meeting her master in England and Tibet. Theosophical books like, The Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East, by Baird T. Spalding told tales of physically encountering these masters and witnessing miraculous things. The stories about the masters kept getting bigger all the time. Alice Bailey, also a theosophist, said she dictated the direct teachings of Djwhal Khul, a Tibetan Master in her many books. Elizabeth Clare Prophet said she channeled all of the masters and then some. After Mark died, Elizabeth said he became a master that she channeled exclusively.
Helping Ellen discern whether the teachings of the Aquarian Foundation and Summit Lighthouse wasn’t the first time I had helped in odd situations like this. I was clairvoyant from birth, so was frequently asked for my spiritual input, whether it was for a Catholic exorcism or consultation on matters like this.
Ellen was unimaginable wealthy. She lived in a castle on her own island. She was self-made and very savvy. Her den was filled with priceless artifacts and books from floor to ceiling. She delighted when she pulled out jewelry boxes full of “apported” crystals from Keith Rhinehart that supposedly came popping out of his mouth in her presence. Each crystal had a story, and she loved telling me how much she paid for each and the circumstances that manifested it. Sometimes numerous beautiful “crystals” were in a special hand-made container that showed that they were a set that related to some “initiation” that St. Germain (Keith) had put her through in the past.
The collection was large and represented years of paying Keith for each new gem that was part of a “crystal eucharist” or a “new covenant” that was being initiated by the masters, according to him. Ellen believed everything Keith had told her, and I felt no obligation to correct her blind view to spiritual materialism.
Because I didn’t want to outright reject Ellen’s offer to take over where she thought Keith and Clare were faltering, I asked her for any written works channeled through Keith that I could read. She pulled down secret lessons that stacked up two feet high. She gave me films and recordings, and we watched amazing videos of Keith in his closet manifesting as St. Germain and the masters. Ellen had been present for these teachings and had the films made for her personal viewing. They were amazing. After Keith would enter his “closet” and close the curtain, each person in the room would walk up, one at a time, to stand in front of the closet. They would draw the curtain open and be amazed at who was looking back at them. Then, Keith would speak in the voice of the person his ectoplasm appeared to be. Each person was shocked and amazed and became a believer immediately.
When Keith was in jail, he read Mark Prophet’s books and adopted much of that spiritual path. When he returned to the Aquarian Foundation after his release, Keith used his “closet practice” to channel St. Germain and the masters. He had the words written down, and they became a substantial, secret teaching that was available to his students for a price.
Elizabeth Clare Prophet did the same with her St. Germain teachings that she channeled. Both Keith and Elizabeth continued to channel more and more and became even more flamboyant with their claims that they could “become” any master in a moment. I witnessed both “become” St. Germain in the blink of an eye. Sometimes Keith would say something, then go into trance and say that what he had just spoken came from this or that master. Elizabeth, in the end, didn’t go into trance at all and yet claim to channel Jesus and Mary, St. Germain, and all the masters at a moment’s notice. She taught many of her students to channel these same masters.
St. Germain is a Guiding Light for the Initiate to Follow
Addressing the topic of the great Master Saint Germain is a vital and timely question. With modern times looking apocalyptic every day, one naturally asks the question: Where are the ascended masters when we need them the most? This pertinent question requires a good answer.
Saint Germain is accredited for being present at critical turning points in history to add wisdom and spiritual insight that is needed to help history move in a healthy direction. There is much speculation historically about Saint Germain, and even more channeled and psychic speculation in our day about his current activities. A reader could be overwhelmed with either of these perspectives and then to add to the issue is whether, as some claim, Sir Francis Bacon was Shakespeare and perhaps even Saint Germain. It boggles the mind. Where is a beginner to start on this important path of inquiry?
Rudolf Steiner, the penultimate source on all things spiritual, tells us in his teachings that Saint Germain was the reincarnation of the apostle John, the author of the Gospel of John, the Epistles of John, and the Book of Revelation. St. John was called Lazarus before he was raised from the dead by Jesus Christ. After Lazarus was raised, he was called John the “beloved”, the “one the Lord loved.”
Therefore, Saint Germain is the first and greatest Initiate of Christianity, raised from the dead into the light by Jesus Christ. This remarkable distinction makes St. John/St. Germain a most important person for all those on the Christian path. St. John/St. Germain is the guiding light, the beacon, the example for the aspirant to follow.
Prior to St. John’s incarnation, he was the being known as Hiram Abiff, the master builder who was raised from the dead in the rituals of freemasonry, according to some accounts. Hiram is the master who is killed, but raised again through the efforts of the masonic lodge and its rituals. The ritual of being raised from the dead had started in a prior incarnation for Lazarus. This was a preparation for the first Christian ritual of Lazarus being raised from the dead by Jesus Christ.
Rudolf Steiner also tells us that St. John/St. Germain then had numerous incarnations as a martyr. He tells us that St. Germain and the Master Jesus (different than Jesus Christ or the Etheric Christ) alternate their incarnations each 100 years so that one of them is incarnated at all times. These two masters lead the other masters who join together in the circle of twelve that surround Christ.
The Master Jesus was previously the being called Zarathustra, the priest-king of ancient Persian times. St. Germain and the Master Jesus were quite hidden from outer history as they travelled throughout the world inspiring those who make history. Other masters, male and female, also incarnate and work either in the East, the Center, or the West. St. Germain and the Master Jesus travel between the other masters, coordinating their activities.
St. Germain and the Master Jesus are able to inspire people from a distance. They do not need to be physically present to “teach” others. They work through dreams, visions, and spiritual intuition. Maybe if they are with us today, they might work through the internet, delivering their teachings to initiates around the world with the speed of light with messages of hope and wisdom and nudges that guide our forward path. You would know them by their words.
There are usually seven masters incarnated at any one time in history. Sometimes a group of twelve masters incarnate for a specific purpose. In our time, both St. Germain and the Master Jesus are incarnated along with most of the masters who comprise the Mother Lodge. This is due to the gravity of our times and the high-stakes waged in the battle for the human soul and spirit.
Did I Meet a Master in the Sequoia Forest?
Once I met a person I believed to be a master in the sequoia forest at a theosophical lodge. Later, I saw his golden foot-prints on a path in the giant forest shinning like magic sunlight. When I met him, he appeared out of nowhere and was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. His eyes were like sun-filled blue skies that were deeper than all space. His smile melted all fear and only love could be in his presence.
I had just asked someone in our group about the mystery man who people had spoken of with such reverence – and then felt him as I turned around to see him standing close behind me. I knew he had to be the person people had spoken of so reverently. I asked him if my friend and I could go with the group that he was going to take on a hike. He laughed. Then I forgot what I had asked.
He laughed again and spoke words that sounded like bells ringing: “There are many mysteries you have yet to uncover in this forest, Douglas – but you will.”
I was stunned. I had not mentioned my name. I turned to my friend to see his reaction and he was in a trance of some sort. I was shocked and turned to the mystery man who had disappeared as quietly as he had arrived. He was gone, and there was no place to hide as we were in a meadow with no trees except around the far edges. When I turned to my friend again, he seemed to be coming out of a dream or spell.
I surveyed the area for the mysterious man, but could not find him anywhere. When I queried others about him and this “hike” I had heard that he takes people on, no one knew much about him or his comings and goings. They said he would just show up exactly when the group had free time and take people to magical places in the sequoia forest. He never arranged anything. No one knew where he lived or anything about him. They only knew his first name, Peter. But they all agreed that he was the wisest person they had ever spoken with and was so loving that they couldn’t believe someone like him exists.
Sometimes I wonder if I didn’t go on that “hike” with him as my life has unfolded in the most amazing journey that one can imagine. Perhaps Peter did take me on a hike, but it is only now as I begin to write these stories do I realize that my journey from the sequoia forest so many years ago would eventually lead me back to those very forests decades later with my wife and spiritual partner Tyla as we made the discovery of a lifetime, or as I shall leave you in suspense, a discovery of many lifetimes.
I do believe that the Masters of Wisdom and the Harmony of Feelings and Sensations (as Steiner calls them) are certainly real and do incarnate in human bodies. I believe, through my own research, that one of the masters was for years on Ellesmere Island, Canada doing special work to help the pole-shift that is happening, even as you read this story.
I could feel this being doing his work there and often went there in spirit to help with the work. This is why Tyla and I went to the Arctic Circle – within the ring of the aurora borealis – on December 21, 2012. One of the masters always stands at the doorway between the physical and spiritual to help transitioning souls. The Earth, as a whole, is now going through this process collectively. St. Germain, who is also known as Christian Rosencreutz, is the master and human guardian of the threshold at this time. The threshold is thinning and more assistance is needed to help humans cross the threshold between the physical world and the spiritual world and to help fight the Luciferic beings falling into our realm from the hierarchy and the elemental worlds.
Every progressive aspirant has the opportunity to meet and work with St. John/St. Germain/Christian Rosencreutz as they approach the threshold to the spiritual world. Rudolf Steiner spoke about the fact that Christian Rosencreutz actually “calls” those to himself whose destiny it is to work together. He says that the aspirant might feel a “tap on the shoulder” and hear inviting words that ask one to come to the threshold and prepare for spiritual ascent.
St. Germain, as Lazarus, is the first human to ascend to the spiritual by being raised from the dead by Jesus Christ. St. Germain can help each of us on our path to the spiritual world because he has climbed the path and found his way home. And like bodhisattvas, St. Germain vows to make sure that all other spirits are helped to enter heaven before he himself will enter again.
There is no wrong path in understanding St. Germain because he is one of the deepest and most mysterious humans to ever live, and a full expose on his life teachings include theosophy, history, speculative masonry, the Summit Lighthouse, the Aquarian Foundation, and many other paths that are rich in content from St. Germain.
Could St. Germain Have Been the Incarnation of Shakespeare, Francis Bacon and others?
In consideration of the question of who wrote the writings penned by William Shakespeare, I, like so many others, have my own theory and only have circumstantial evidence to support it. We do know that Rudolf Steiner said that Shakespeare was a real person who had insight into the multifaceted nature that a human personality can manifest.
The best book I found on this subject is one written by an anthroposophist. I don’t agree with everything in the book, but it does take a step back and see the bigger picture.
Who Wrote Bacon: William Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, and James I, by Richard Ramsbotham
I have spent considerable time and effort trying to solve this mystery and have read many of the books on the subject. Many authors sense that something is “wrong with the picture” of Shakespeare writing his plays single-handedly. Some of the books that were helpful in my research are listed below.
The Great Cryptogram: Francis Bacon's Cipher in the So-Called Shakespeare Plays, by Ignatius Donnelly
Bacon, Shakespeare, and the Rosicrucians, by Manly P. Hall
Francis Bacon our Shakespeare, by Edwin Reed
Francis Bacon, Poet, Prophet, Philosopher, Versus Phantom Captain Shakespeare, The Rosicrucian Mask, by William Francis C. Wigston
The Shakespeare Code, by Virginia M. Fellows,
"Shakespeare" Identified, by John Thomas Looney
Secret History of Francis Bacon, by Alfred Dodd
Who Wrote Shakespeare? , by John Michell
Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown, by Andrew Lang
Bacon is Shakespeare Together with a Reprint of Bacon's Promus of Formularies and Elegancies, by Francis Bacon and Edwin Durning-Lawrence
Shakespeare Bacon Conundrum: Direct Evidence of Francis Bacon's Shakespeare Authorship, by Russell Storrs Hall
Did Sources of Shakespeare Come from St. Germain?
Unfortunately, none of these books tells the simple story that I believe. John Dee’s library at Mortlake was undoubtedly the source of the Renaissance and Classical references in Shakespeare’s work. No other library in England had the books with those ideas in them. It is quite obvious that a group of people, using the ideas found in Dee’s library met and discussed these ideas, whether in Dee’s library, or more likely at the Inn that Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe often met which served as an unofficial guild hall for actors.
Francis Bacon was fully aware of Dee’s library, as were all the royalty. Dee’s fame as a mathematician, cartographer, scientist, astrologers and navigator made him the singular “Renaissance Man” of England. In a way, he plays a key role in England’s Renaissance.
Dee was also an ambassador for James I to Europe and arranged the “Chemical Wedding” of James I’s daughter Elizabeth to Fredrick V at Heidelberg. Dame Francis Yates gives a beautiful exposition of this matter in her important book, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment. Dee writes in the introduction to one of his works that he wishes to usher in a New Age that synthesizes science, art, and religion in a Universal Reformation. Dee went to Europe to make the arrangements for England and Europe to unite through the marriage that would spark a Reformation that would break away from the power of the Papacy.
Dee was a statesman who accomplished the negotiation for the wedding, but was later discredited through his association with the “channel” Eduard Kelly who was the clairvoyant used to read the angelic language of Enoch that Dee used for crystal scrying. Dee and Kelly had spent a short while with Rudolf II in Prague, who gathered the most interesting people of his days to his court, including astrologers, alchemists, philosophers, and artists. Eventually Dee was snubbed and ejected from Rudolf’s court. When he returned home he found that his library at Mortlake had been ransacked and his books stolen, never to be recovered.
Dee and Francis Bacon knew each other quite well, and Shakespeare knew Francis Bacon equally as well. This is known to be true because Bacon was the “Keeper of the Keys” for the British kingdom for many years and as such was in charge of all printing in Britain. Nothing came into print without Bacon’s permission and additions. This historical fact is little known.
Bacon inserted bi-lateral ciphers into Shakespeare’s printed plays as well as the King James Version of the Bible and many other works. Bacon had his hand in everything that was printed in the court. He believed himself to be the rightful heir to the throne of England and this claim was found in the coded words of the documents he printed. He believed that history would one day know the truth once someone decoded the messages. That is why many of Shakespeare’s plays have coded messages saying “Bacon is King.” Even the King James Bible, in its original printing, had cyphers that indicated the true history of the kings of England according to Bacon.
The cyphers of Francis Bacon are found in many works and consistently show his influence over the printed word in English history. But Bacon is no spiritual master, let alone St. Germain, even though at certain points in his life he was inspired by St. Germain. Bacon’s natural scientific perspective led the world into materialism, not spirituality.
Bacon was like Amos Comenius who was the last of the Rosicrucians to come out of the Unity Brethren, the Moravian Brotherhood, the Wandering Bohemians, who carried the three Rosicrucian works of Johann Valentin Andreas eventually into the British Royal Society. Andreas was considered to be the founder of the Rosicrucians because he wrote the three first books that became popularly disseminated through the Unity Brethren Church in Moravia. Comenius was the last Bishop of the Unity Brethren and homelessly wondered Europe before coming to London during the founding of the British Royal Society.
Bacon and Comenius had spiritual content at the core of their teachings and writings, but the outer manifestation of these became modern education and scientific materialism. Comenius was the archetypal Rosicrucian fallen into materialism. Rudolf Steiner speaks extensively about Comenius, who is considered the father of modern education. Steiner points out that Comenius wrote the most popular book of his time, The World in Pictures, which led to thoughts being bound to images and things.
The works of Dee, Bacon, and Comenius are examples of good intentions gone astray. All were geniuses who led us into the next phase of human development – materialistic science devoid of spirit. This can be found prominently in all their works as they developed over time. In their youth, they were seemingly connected to spiritual sources, and then they drifted towards a fall from spiritual source into materialism, a fall, however, that was necessary for the development of the consciousness soul of humanity.
Why the discussion of St. Germain in our day is relevant is that these are the times where humanity begins its ascent into a higher level of consciousness, one that anthroposophists call Spirit Self and what neoanthroposophy also call “Our Spirit.”
Now is the time to turn the rudder in the direction of the spirit and to seek the help of the ever present Masters of Wisdom like St. Germain/Christian Rosencreutz or the being of Wisdom Herself – Sophia.
The study of St. Germain and his teachings can lead the initiate into magical places in the great forest of consciousness where he can Know Thyself and, eventually, Know Her.
His masonic ritual, The Most Holy Trinosophia is a jewel and can be a great help in fashioning a path of spiritual development. I only know of one poem that he wrote and I will leave you with that. It is called:
Philosophical Sonnet
by Comte St. Germain
Curious scrutator of all nature,
I have known of the great whole, the principle and the end,
I have seen gold thick in the depths of the double mercury;
I have seized its substance, and surprised its changing.
I explain by that art, the soul with the womb of a Mother,
Make its home, take it away, and as a kernel
Placed against a grain of wheat, under the humid pollen;
The one plant and the other vine-stock, are the bread and wine,
Nothing was, God willing, nothing became something,
I doubted it, I sought that on which the universe rests,
Nothing preserves the equilibrium and serves to sustain,
Then with the weight of praise and of blame,
I weighed the eternal, it called my soul,
I died, I adored, I knew nothing more.
After contemplating this lecture, please leave your reflections and insights for others. This is a place where we can transcend time and space and help any spiritual seeker, whenever he or she arrives, to ascend.
