From the Pittsburgh Press, 1948 An active, Theosophical Fortean.
Olive Houlker was born 13 October 1904 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and would spend her entire life in the city and its environs. Her father was named Whittaker, and he—like Fort’s father—was a grocer. Her mother shared her name, though seemed to go by Ollie. Whittaker’s parents had both come from England, though he was born in Pennsylvania; Ollie’s father was from Scotland, her mother Pennsylvania. They married around 1896, when Whittaker was 26 and Ollie 24. Olive had two older siblings, May, born around 1898, and Ralph, born around 1900. In 1910, the family lived in McKees Rock.
Ten years on, May was not listed in the family home—she was old enough to have moved out—and the rest of the family had relocated to Pittsburgh, where Whittaker was still a grocer. Olive was in school. Ralph was 19, and in school. The family seemed financially stable: they owned their home free and clear, no mortgage. They owned the same home in 1930, 546 Dawson—it was listed as worth$11,000 or about $153,000 in today’s dollars—but Whittaker was no longer working. Presumably he had retired. Ralph was still at home, approaching thirty, and working construction. Olive was a saleslady at a department store. Olive may also have studied some at Beaver College and taught elementary school for a while.
Olive Houlker was born 13 October 1904 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and would spend her entire life in the city and its environs. Her father was named Whittaker, and he—like Fort’s father—was a grocer. Her mother shared her name, though seemed to go by Ollie. Whittaker’s parents had both come from England, though he was born in Pennsylvania; Ollie’s father was from Scotland, her mother Pennsylvania. They married around 1896, when Whittaker was 26 and Ollie 24. Olive had two older siblings, May, born around 1898, and Ralph, born around 1900. In 1910, the family lived in McKees Rock.
Ten years on, May was not listed in the family home—she was old enough to have moved out—and the rest of the family had relocated to Pittsburgh, where Whittaker was still a grocer. Olive was in school. Ralph was 19, and in school. The family seemed financially stable: they owned their home free and clear, no mortgage. They owned the same home in 1930, 546 Dawson—it was listed as worth$11,000 or about $153,000 in today’s dollars—but Whittaker was no longer working. Presumably he had retired. Ralph was still at home, approaching thirty, and working construction. Olive was a saleslady at a department store. Olive may also have studied some at Beaver College and taught elementary school for a while.
Some time before 1935, Olive married Alfred Oltcher, and the two settled near her parents, at 140 Washington Avenue. Alfred was a German immigrant working in an office. He was about a year older. They were renting their home. Olive had given birth to a son around the middle of the decade, Lee, born around 1935. Official records are difficult to find after 1940, with the exception of a few city directories that confirm the Oltchers remained the area.
Oltcher did not completely disappear from the records though. Starting in the mid-1940s, I find her writing for the Canadian Theosophist, first letters, then articles and book reviews. Her name shows up in online searches of magazines through the mid-1960s—by which time she was entering her sixties—with letters to the editor. Probably there is much more material out there, but what I find gives some indication of her interests and thoughts—though even more comes from her Fortean activities, and associated hobbies. To give a full sense of her, I will quote extensively from the articles rather than paraphrase them.
In February 1945, the Canadian Theosophist magazine put out volume 25, issue 12. I do not know much about the magazine, though early on it does seem to have been associated with Canadian modernist literature—as Theosophy was generally intwined with modernist literature. Oltcher’s letter to the editor dealt with literature, too, at the tail end of high modernism. She wrote,
“Editor, The Canadian Theosophist: - In Aldous Huxley's latest book Time Must Have A Stop, there are several excellent passages. I think you will be especially interested in reading the following - (if you have not already read the book):
"For those of us who are not congenitally the members of any organized church, who have found that humanism and blue-domeism are not enough, who are not content to remain in the darkness of spiritual ignorance, the squalour of vice, or that other squalour of mere respectability, the minimum working hypothesis would seem to be about as follows
"That there is a Godhead or Ground, which is the unmanifested principle of all manifestation.
"That the Ground is transcendent and immanent.
"That it is possible for human beings to love, know and, from virtually, to become actually identified with the Ground.
"That to achieve this unitive knowledge, to realize this supreme identity, is the final end and purpose of human existence.
"That there is a Law or Dharma, which must be obeyed, a Tao or Way, which must be followed, if men are to achieve their final end.
"That the more there is of I, me, mine, the less there is of the Ground; and that consequently the Tao is a Way of humility and compassion, the Dharma a Law of mortification and self-transcending awareness. Which accounts, of course, for the facts of human history. People love their egos and don't wish to mortify them, don't wish to see why they shouldn't `express their personalities' and `have a good time.' They get their good times; but also and inevitably they get wars and syphilis and revolution and alcoholism, tyranny and, in default of an adequate religious hypothesis, the choice between some lunatic idolatry, like nationalism, and a sense of complete futility and despair. Unutterable miseries! But throughout recorded history most men and women have preferred the risks, the positive certainty, of such disasters to the laborious whole-time job of trying to get to know the divine Ground of all being. In the long run we get exactly what we ask for."
A"s ever, am thoroughly enjoying The Canadian Theosophist and the divergencies of opinion. It all helps to sharpen our Thinking Sword with which we may rend the Veil. Hope the best for your son, of whom all Canada must be proud. Regards,
"Olive Oltcher.
163 Washington Ave.,
Bellevue 2, Pa., U.S.A."
The letter obviously mostly concerns Huxley, but it is possible to see through the Huxley to the points that Oltcher may have been after—and these are consistent with developing understanding of modern mystical movements, such as Theosophy. Mysticism was developing in response to secularism and science, re-inventing itself. One way it did so was through acts of imagination that could lead to what Wouter Hanegraaff has characterized as “participation”: a mystical feeling of unity that is an irresolvable aspect of the human experience. Huxley was encouraging readers to pretend that there was a godhead and that by treating it as virtually so—by acting as if, in Michael Saler’s terms—one could come to experience the unity in reality. The letter further suggests that Oltcher was neither inclined toward traditional forms of religion nor humanism: that is to say, she was thoroughly ensconced in the secular moment, which, above all, was defined by the choices of faith (and non-faith) it offered.
That is undoubtedly too much to read out of a single letter to a single magazine, and Oltcher’s next (known) contribution, a review four years later (volume 30, number 7), offers little more room for speculation and instead shows her to be a perceptive reader and an incisive writer, as well as open-minded about the (possible) faults of the Theosophical Society, even as she clearly was devoted. She wrote,
“MYTH OF THE MAGUS
"In MYTH OF THE MAGUS, by E. M. Butler and published by the Cambridge University Press, the author shows that the lives of those persons gifted with the more subtle powers of Nature seem to follow a similar pattern. The singular lives of such persons as the two Bacons, Joan of Arc, Faust, Apollonius of Tyana, Pythagoras, Moses, Solomon, Christ, Zoroaster, and others, including Madame Blavatsky, (all of whom are considered in this volume) indicate that in many particulars this resemblance is evident. The identifying characteristics of the Magi, according to the author, are:
"1. Supernatural or mysterious origin of the hero, 2. Portents at birth, 3. Perils menacing infancy. 4. Some kind of initiation,
5. Far-distant wanderings, 6. A magical contest, 7. A trial, or persecution, 8. A last scene,
9. A violent or mysterious death, 10. A resurrection and/or ascension.
Often the records are based on mythical or imaginative data or on commonly accepted rumor, rather than historical fact, so that the conclusions are not necessarily final nor authoritative, but using the data at hand, Miss Butler has analyzed the selected lives and checked them against the list which she believes to be representative at least in part, of all magi, and what follows is often highly interesting reading.
"Theosophists will be especially interested in the chapter MADAME AND THE MASTERS wherein once again, the much maligned H.P.B. is ushered into public view, this time to be measured for a possible fitting of the magus cape.
Miss Butler's criticisms are not always complimentary (as for instance when she calls Faust ". . . that scrubby little medieval sorcerer . . .") but she does not vilify nor is she inclined to be vindictive. I don't think Miss Butler believes in Masters, but she has the good grace to say, "As far as such Masters are concerned, the burden of disproof is on the sceptics. There is a great deal of evidence in their favor, and since it is next to impossible to investigate it, one should keep an open mind."
Perhaps the chief merit of the treatise (which runs to about 270 pages) lies in the attention focused on the Society and its founder and the possible interest stimulated in further investigating the books of H.P.B. It is always stimulating, I think, to members of the Society to read the reactions of outsiders to the Society and its work, whether they be an indictment of its methods or a somewhat wilted bouquet for its accomplishments. The book contains a wealth of bibliographical material which will be of value to the student.
Mrs. Olive Oltcher
187 Belonda St.,
Pittsburgh 11, Pa."
Oltcher’s skepticism—explicitly Fortean—as well as her labile reading was on display earlier that year (vol. 30, number 2) in an article she wrote for the magazine. She was a thoughtful woman of wide reading, though the object about which her ideas orbited remained Theosophical. She wrote,
"WAS FREUD MISTAKEN ABOUT THE OEDIPUS MYTH?
"The interpretation of myths, dreams, parables, etc., may be varied considerably merely by emphasizing one feature of the story and slurring over what is not of immediate use. Anyone can come up with a different solution (even an opposite one) by featuring the slurred-over event or idea and ignoring what had formerly been stressed. We are inclined to read into a myth just what we wish it to signify.
"I heard Erich Fromm on the radio program Invitation To Learning today discussing Nietzsche and the ideal of morality. I hope Nietzsche meant what Dr. Fromm thinks he meant. If Nietzsche's idea of a superman was an individual - so evolved that his higher self manifested in all his thinking, then surely we want to encourage the concept of supermen, and if this were actually Nietzsche's premise, certain it is that he has been misunderstood these many years. Given that interpretation, this theory of supermen would be not unlike Plato's philosopher-statesmen who were men of super-ethics and principles, possessing the understanding and wisdom necessary for the proper administration of a state. They were dedicated, in other words, by their superior ability and education to so rule the proletariat that the latter would live in peace and contentment.
"Is it possible that Plato also has been misunderstood by his enthusiastic followers? In The Platonic Legend, by Warner Fite, the author has no illusions about Plato (or Socrates, either) as a Master of Morals. Moral ideas in our sense, he says, were far from the Platonic mind. Although prejudiced against the beloved Master, some things pointed out by Professor Fite are well taken. It does not seem to occur to him,
however, that Plato's writings may be considered other than literally but Plato himself has suggested that there is an esoteric interpretation for the few.
The thing I want to emphasize is not whether Dr. Fromm or Professor Fite are right or wrong, but the necessity at all times of maintaining that Fortean "suspension of judgment" wherever there is room for doubt. [Emphasis mine.]
"Dr. Fromm's conclusions on the Oedipus myth are certainly worth our careful analysis. He has investigated with considerable thoroughness the myth from the Freudian point of view and upon further probing and analyzing the symbology, he has come up with a different interpretation. The author's conclusion is that the Oedipus myth is not centered on the crime of incest, but on the conflict between patriarchal and matriarchal principles. He understands Sophocles' trilogy as "an attack against the victorious patriarchal order by the representatives of the defeated matriarchal system . . . ."
"Considering the trilogy as a whole, the struggle seems to Dr. Fromm to be one of opposition to paternal authority, having its roots in a preference for a matriarchal system of government which he believes may have preceded the reign of gods on Mt. Olympus. The matriarchal system stressed equality of all men, and had for its goal the happiness of men. It emphasized the ties of blood, ties to the soil, and a passive acceptance of all natural phenomena, whereas the patriarchal form recognized obedience to authority as its main factor and was characterized by respect for man - made law, by the predominance of rational thought and by man's effort to change natural phenomena.
"All this is brought out in an article "The Oedipus Myth" by Erich Fromm in the January issue of Scientific American. Fromm cites the Swiss scholar J. J. Bachofen whose theory is the basis for Dr. Fromm's interpretation of the ill-starred Oedipus. The theories of both Fromm and Freud were based on practically the same fundamentals. The difference lay in the inference these men drew as to the relation these theses bore to each other. In his Mutterrecht (published in 1861) he suggests that (and I am quoting Fromm) " . . . in the beginning of human history sexual relations were promiscuous; as a result only the mother's parenthood was unquestionable. To her alone could consanguinity be traced. She was, therefore, the authority and lawgiver - in the family group, in society and in religion. On the basis of his analysis of religious documents in Greek and Roman antiquity, Bachofen came to the conclusion that the religion of the Olympian gods was preceded by a religion in which goddesses, motherlike figures, were the supreme deities." (Goethe mentioned in reading Plutarch he found that "in Grecian antiquity the Mothers are spoken of as Goddesses.")
"And to quote Bachofen himself: "The relationship through which mankind has first grown into civilization, which is the beginning of the development of every virtue and of the formation of the nobler aspects of human existence is the matriarchal principle, which becomes effective as the principle of love, unity, and peace . . . Its principle is that of universality, whereas the patriarchal principle is that of restrictions . . . . The idea of the universal brotherhood of man is rooted in the principle of motherhood, and this idea vanishes with the development of patriarchal society."
"The Oedipus complex (wrongly supposed by Freud to be a boy's incestuous strivings toward his mother and his resulting hostility against his father) is, in Dr. Fromm's eyes, a complex concerned with the rebellion of the son against the pressure of the father's authority - an authority rooted in the patriarchal, authoritarian structure of society. “. . . this kind of authority tends to break his will, his spontaneity, his independence. But since man is not born to be broken, the child fights against the authority represented by his parents; he fights not only for his freedom from pressure but also for his freedom to be himself, a full - fledged human being and not an automaton. In this struggle some children are more successful than others; most of them are defeated to some extent in their fight for freedom. The ways in which the defeat is brought about are manifold, but whatever they are, the scars left in the child's unsuccessful fight against irrational authority are to be found at the bottom of every neurosis. Such a scar is represented in a syndrome of which the most important features are a weakening or paralysis of the individual's originality and spontaneity, a weakening of the self and the substitution of a pseudo self in which the feeling of "I am" is dulled and replaced by the experience of self as the sum total of expectations others have about the self, and finally a substitution of heteronomy for autonomy.
"Does our interpretation of the Oedipus myth and of the Oedipus complex imply that Freud's theory was without foundation?
"Freud observed three facts follows:
FIRST: He noted the presence of sexual strivings in children.
SECOND: Freud observed that the ties by which children are bound to their parents are often not severed at a time when, in the normal development, they should be. He concluded this irrational 'fixation' to be found in all neuroses.
THIRD: Freud recognized that the conflict between father and son is characteristic of patriarchal cultures, and he demonstrated particularly how an unsuccessful rebellion against the father's authority and the fears resulting from the defeat form the basis for a neurotic development.
"These observations he synthesized into his theory. He assumed the second phenomenon (attachment or fixation to the mother) was rooted in the first, and the third, a result of this sexual rivalry."
Fromm shows that the tie to the mother is not essentially a sexual tie, and the conflict between father and son has little to do with sexual rivalry, but is characteristic of patriarchal society and family life.
There is nothing in ISIS UNVEILED or THE SECRET DOCTRINE anent the occult symbology of this myth but I am sure we could read one into it if we tried.
Mrs. Olive Oltcher.
187 Belonda St.,
Pittsburgh 11, Pa."
That skepticism recurred the following year (volume 30, no 11: her third appearance in this volume), applied more directly to Theosophical doctrine. In 1950, Oltcher took up the subject of reincarnation, a common subject among Theosophists, though it had would not become an object of popular contemplation for another couple of years, with the publication of “The Search for Bridey Murphy” (1956). Oltcher’s writing is still precise, but, in line with her esoteric subject, the words themselves become more obscure: that is to say, she uses a potentially vague vocabulary in a careful way. She wrote,
“SOME REFLECTIONS ON REINCARNATION
“by Olive Oltcher
“Reincarnation, one of the fundamental concepts of Theosophy, is based primarily on the ideas of justice and evolution. Our sense of justice, is outraged at the thought of one man sent forth on his earth journey equipped with all the advantages of success and another with several counts already against him. If there be justice, this situation must have evolved from some conditions and actions set up in the past by each individual himself.
“Compassionate people look kindly upon the hypothesis, and its disproof has never to my knowledge been seriously attempted, but it remains for the individual to verify the tenet himself, if he can. Certain mystical knowledge is claimed, by some which, at least to them, is sufficient proof. The early mystery schools taught the doctrine and perhaps satisfied their initiates by adumbration or proof, that reincarnation was a fact. The only religions to repudiate it today are the Christian and Mohammedan, and within the Christian Church it has been acknowledged by various sects. Giordano Bruno, J. B. van Helmont, David Hume, and many another mental titan accepted it. But the label is bandied about as if everybody meant the same thing, when, in fact, modern Theosophists mean something different than did the Bakongs of Borneo, for instance, who believe their dead reincarnate as bear-cats.
“From the Theosophical viewpoint, let us examine the evolutionary factor, fundamental to this philosophical concept. Theosophists argue that if evolution be a fact, reincarnation also must be implicit, since Man's evolution, to be such, must progress from stages anterior to the human kingdom, to supra-human categories. This, obviously, does not happen in the course of one incarnation. Also, say the Theosophists, the 'karma" or results of one's activities, thoughts, etc., on this stratum of being must be rewarded or expiated as the case may be, within the same framework of existence. Along such lines of reasoning is the theory of reincarnation justified by many thinking people in the West.
“Evolution is a process whereby elements, qualities, aspects, or groups of differentiated characteristics of a being progress from a less- perfected to a more efficient or more complete state or stage. This being so, say the Theosophists, misconceptions like the old chestnut about beating, or even eating, one's own grandmother, are ridiculous since no one comes back in a less evolved body than that which he has left.
“Yet, involution is as evident a fact as is evolution. From a teleological viewpoint, we admit the emerging, sustaining, and final destruction of races or nations as part of a greater cosmic plan of evolution, yet we are constrained from justifying a man's descent and fall from grace on any such principle. That he may serve as a horrible example to the rest of us is hardly a proper philosophical attitude either, but we may tentatively offer him as Exhibit One in establishing our thesis that there is an inverse - evolution whereby a man may become less human than he was to begin with. Nor can we set ourselves up as judges, except in extreme cases, of an individual's standing in the evolutionary scheme of things. He may be slipping fast as, say, a sadist, and yet fulfill an esthetic function as a creator of great beauty in one of the arts. We have to go easy with our non sequiturs. He's climbing up the evolutionary ladder with his right foot and slipping down with his left. Eventually, should his evil tendencies overwhelm his whole being he will reach a negative evolutionary stage and we may then, and only then, point our finger and throw our stone.
“All right. This hypothetical and potential Mephistopheles proceeds to degrade himself until at his death he has practically reached his moral nadir. Shouldn't he, then, by the same law of justice we prate so much about, receive in a subsequent incarnation, a body befitting the disintegrating character of his ego? Don't punishments fit crimes in supernal Courts of Justice either? Disregarding a theory merely because it may be ugly is not worthy of searchers for Truth. When we begin to gold-leaf our beliefs, we are knocking on a false door that never will open.
“There is another tenet of reincarnation that has made me ponder again and again. "Time" is usually considered no object in the evolutionary pattern. It is immaterial to Theosophists how many times we return to complete our cycle of experience on this globe. But, personally, it makes quite a difference to me, especially when one's very dear friends show a tendency to evolve at a speedy rate which may merit them a transference to some higher planetary chain of life. Then again, call me a product of my age if you will, but why, if the goal of evolution be so grand, couldn't the plan include, instead of one long, long path of reincarnations, a plurality (innumerable suits me) of parallel lives which would gather experience of many differing varieties and exploit all the categories of existence from the densest to the phenomenal, and also the more tenuous? Perhaps this is so and we cannot recall our other miscellaneous selves, except in dreams sometimes, or in vague intuitional flashes?
“I was once very sure what the purpose of life was; now I wonder, like the veriest beginning ponderer. Only of this am I sure, that we should avoid dogmatism no matter how dear our concept may be to ourselves. After all, there is so little we know, and that little may be surprisingly erroneous in many of its facets.
“187 Belonda St.,
Pittsburgh 11, Pa.”
A letter to the Saturday Review in 1951 (6 January) gives some insight into how Oltcher came to her broad knowledge, as well as he continued disinclination toward formal education—disdain would be too strong a word. The Review advertised the Fortean Society a lot early in its history, and also praised Fort. In this case, though, Oltcher was responding to an article by Ben Ray Redman which argued against the “Great Books” movement, which had taken over the University of Chicago and was being spread around the country through local groups. (It’s clear that Oltcher belonged to one.) The idea was the Americans could be cultured by reading a list of great books—an idea that Redman found naive and overly deferential to the common intelligence, but that Oltcher thought was fruitful, even if she viewed it through her usual skeptical lens. She wrote,
“SIR: Regarding some of Mr. Redman’s comments I think he has failed to observe the drop of ointment in his cup of files. The very fact that there are from three to perhaps a
dozen astute people gathered in numerous groups throughout the nation who can intelligently discuss the great thinkers of the past, is to me of greater comfort than a reduction in taxes.
“Perhaps Mr. Redman is correct, yet I have found Aristophanes and the other Greek dramatists most delightful, without the benefit of "much detailed information"—in fact without any specific study preliminary to the reading of these dramas.
“I note that Mr; Redman in three instances remarks about the average individual having only limited time at his disposal. One portions out his time as he sees fit, and if canasta and television suffer in the process in order to study Homer and Sextus Empiricus,
the individual himself gains in perspicuity, sense of values, and mental agility. And I should like Mr. Redman to remember, when looking askance at the choice of texts, that
there never has existed a booklist that appealed in its entirety to more than two or three persons.
“I agree with Mr. Redman that groups often digress from the subject. I hope they continue to do so. I have learned more incidental knowledge by this method than I would have thought possible, and I now look forward to the digressions along with
the main theme. Had I not heard from members of other groups I would have concluded that the group I attend is composed of members possessing especially superior talent, but the enthusiasm of friends attending groups in other cities is equal to my own.
“OLIVE OLTCHER.
Pittsburgh, Pa.”
Clearly, she was putting this reading to work in contemplating the issues of the day—and, indeed, has a wide diet of reading. For the next appearance I find of her is a letter to the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences (!) in 1952. She had read an article on the current state of biology and processed it through Greek mythology and history:
“Gentlemen:
“I have just read Jean Rostand’s article “Biology and the Burden of Our Times” and find it echoes some of my own thoughts. How easy it would be to shift all responsibility, as did Helen and the other ancient Greeks, to the gods! In re-reading _The Odyssey_ I note:
“‘Presently she (Helen) cast a drug into the wine whereof they drank, a drug to lull all pain and anger, and bring forgetfulness of every sorry. Whoso should drink a draught thereof, when it is mingled in the bowl on that day he would let no tear fall down his cheeks, not though his mother and his father died, not though men slew how brother or dear son with the sword before his face, and his own eyes behled it. Medicines of such virtue and so helpful had the daughter of Zeus.’
“Are we responsible for our acts, or are we not, who is to say? Are we an ever changing composite of forces? Perhaps the forces themselves are not ‘we’ at all; but some minute unidentifiable ‘something’ which causes their cohesion my be you and I. I wonder, have any of the Socrates’ of the past, so glib in telling is to _know ourselves_, ever accomplished the task themselves?
“The term ‘parthogenesis’ is used in M. Rostand’s article. Is it now being used instead of ‘parthenogenesis?’
“I greatly appreciate such provocative articles as this.
Sincerely yours,
Mrs. Olive Oltcher.”
Clearly a careful reader (the magazine admitted it had mis-spelled parthenogenesis), Oltcher was also developing a distinct writing style, seemingly oblique but, in fact, precise, her choice of words and ordering often surprising but not obscure. She was also pressing against her own convictions, weighing them. Rostand had surveyed the possibilities of eugenics in the near future—prolonging life, choosing the sex of children, altering human moral and intellectual characteristics through genetic manipulation—what he called “therapy of the spirit”—virgin births, and the creation of supermen. This was evolution of a sort, albeit artificial. And although it was mostly pie in the sky—and remains so—it contacted directly with Oltcher’s own Theosophical ideas about the evolution of the human being. How were futures stages of humankind to be reached: through “natural” spiritual progression or some other means? (Incidentally, one sees here the connection to dissident Theosophical theories that would accuse Atlanteans or aliens of genetically altering earlier human races.)
The last substantive piece I find by Oltcher came a little bit before her letter to the BAS. It was a review for the _Canadian Theosophist_ of a book by Max Freedom Long, who was another Fortean, associated closely with N. Meade Layne and R. DeWitt Miller—fully embedded in the southern California occult scene of the post-War years. Long was interested in theories of magic, especially those developed in Hawaii, and this interest rooted his Forteanism. She wrote,
“Max Freedom Long's book, The Secret Science Behind Miracles (Kosmon Press, Los Angeles) written in 1947, is fundamentally a study of the philosophy of the (now extinct) kahunas of Hawaii, and the application of their methods to present-day needs of Man in his struggle for health and security.
“Mr. Long's investigation is intelligent and sincere, and if some of his hypotheses seem to verge on the fantastic, that is only to say they are like any other hypothesis before it becomes an established axiom. Many of his conclusions are theosophically tenable and all are interesting.
“The kahunas were agnostic, limiting themselves to acquiring knowledge of the realms immediately above and below the human kingdom. Man has, according to the kahunas, in addition to his physical body, what is analogous to a subconscious mind operating through a subtle body (which is capable of reaching out to things and persons at any distance); a conscious mind with its even more tenuous body; and a super-conscious mind with the most rarified body of the three ‘shadowy’ sheaths. The lowest mind or spirit, contains memory and uses a vital force called "mana;" the conscious mind or spirit, can reason but not remember, and its vital force which is correspondingly stronger, is called ‘Manamana;’ the superconscious mind, which has divine powers of realization, uses a very potent vital power known as ‘mana loa.’ These three bodies are interconnected and penetrate the physical body. The superconscious is the highest level that Man is capable of contacting or comprehending, and this the kahunas called ‘Aumakua’ (note the ‘aum’).
“The word ‘mana’ was interesting to me. This vital force, says the author, ‘is electrical in its nature and shows strong magnetic qualities. The invisible substance through which the vital force acts is called `aka' or `shadowy body stuff’.
“The bodily electricity or low ‘mana,’ says Mr. Long, ‘has the amazing characteristic which is THAT IT RESPONDS TO THE COMMANDS AND DIRECTIONS OF THE INDIVIDUAL.’ Mild suggestion is sufficient, but a physical stimulus will facilitate results. (The kahunas use ti leaves in many of their magical performances.) Before we can effectively use our powers, we must recognize that we possess them. Then we may make our demands; they (our powers) will not act without our will.
“‘Obsession' is discussed at length, but I believe there is little or no danger of obsession unless we ourselves invite, by our attitude, thoughts, or conscious invitation, such obsessing entities. The low vital force, or mana, may be analogous to the theosophical conception of ‘kundalini' since the prodigies accomplished seem similar.
“To me, Mr. Long's book is a psychological treatise and has nothing to do with religion. Its merit lies in its investigation of the ‘little known powers in Man,’ and as such is a profitable study. Anything that adds to our knowledge of the working of the minds of human beings in other environments than our own, is worth our time and attention. The longings inherent in mankind are often surprisingly alike, even in the most diverse of cultures and civilizations.
“I sometimes had the feeling, when reading certain passages in the book, that Mr. Long strayed from the plausible, but certainly, there is much in the book worth remembering and pondering.
Olive Oltcher. 187 Belonda St., Pittsburgh, 11, Pa.”
It wasn’t her best bit of writing. She was soft-pedaling and, pretty clearly, wasn’t quite sure what to make of Long’s occult theories, and so dissected them, pulling out pieces, but not offering a prolonged consideration. One gets the feeling the review was tossed off. Still, it shows her wrestling with ideas common in Fortean circles. The only other piece of writing I can find of hers came many years later, in 1965. (She was mentioned as a paying member of the Theosophist Magazine in 1960, but I have not found her writing there.) That last piece was a letter to Esquire magazine. I have not actually seen that letter.
Olive Oltcher died 23 April 1997. She was 92 years old.
Given the relatively scanty information I have on her, it is no surprise that I do not know when or how Oltcher first came across Fort. Certainly, he was known in Theosophical circles—there were a number of Theosophical Forteans. The “Theosophical Forum”—a magazine—mentioned Fort and the Society in 1942, for example. Nor do I really have a sense of how broad her Forteanism was. Beside the reference to Fort in the Canadian Theosophist, al of her Forteanism, as I now it, comes from her interactions with the Fortean Society. Those, though, were both deep and broad, and shed some light on her ideas.
By my count, her name was mentioned at least 66 times in the Fortean Society magazine; while a lot of her activity was concentrated in the late 1940s and early 1950s—although, to be fair, that could be an artefact of Thayer condensing his credit-giving practices—her contributions could be found into the very last issue. All told, she appeared in 32 issues, starting with Doubt 15 (summer 1946)—about a year-and-a-half after her first letter in the “Canadian Theosophist.” At the time, she would have been 41 years old; her son around ten, and so she may have had the time and the family enough financial stability to allow her to develop her interests.
It is difficult to get a full grasp on her interests, because a lot of the credits that she received were generic—Thayer doffed a hat at her sending in something—or vague—she was credited with sending in material on a subject, but her name wasn’t attached to a particular clipping. Still, there’s so much material that some sense can be made. She was drawn to that Fortean warhorse, strange falls—at least eleven clippings, including the Forteanly famous Markham, Louisiana, rain of fishes and money falling in Syracuse, New York. She contributed to Thayer’s hated subject, flying saucers: seven attributions. She covered anomalies such as the mysterious death of fish in South Dakota (that was mentioned by rocketeer R. L. Farnsworth and Gordon Hollyer); red tides (which Thayer blamed on the army dumping poisons to justify buying _more_ poisons); neons disappearing from the legs of women in several cities; a statue that wept when it was kissed; a blast of hot air in Lisbon, following a hurricane, that shot thermometers to around 150 degrees Fahrenheit; an inexplicable hum in Britain that persisted from the late 1940s into the 1950s; and footprints seen on the bottom go the ocean. One could imagine any of these being found in Fort’s books.
Oltcher had a keen eye for coincidences, another trope common in Fort’s books: I count eight of this species, the best of which was about a French man who tried to drown a kitten, only to slip into the pond and himself drown, while the cat scrabbled out. She sent in reports of mysterious explosions (2); bullets from nowhere (1—this referring to a feared sniper in Philadelphia); poisonous smogs (1–remember, this was one of the phenomena cited as important when the Fortean Society was first founded); and what would now be called cryptozoology (5—though some of these bordered on other topics, such as musings on why whales beached themselves, and a four-hundred pound shark found on a Fall River, Massachusetts’ street that might have been an example of a weird rain).
She recognized, too, what was just weird in the news—akin to what might be called “high strangeness” in Fortean circles today. There were two directly attributable to her. She quoted a radio operator who said the thoughts of Christ and Plato still circulated in the air and might someday be receivable by radios. Best, though—perhaps the best bit of Forteana in Doubt’s entire run—was a want-ad she found in the Washington, D.C., Times-Herald. It ran 28 January 1948, and though Thayer promised a follow-up, there never was one, making the story even better, actually. The personal said, “Anyone, anywhere, who saw a man become invisible eight years ago on May 3, 1940, please write immediately to [TT erased] as an invisible man has been with me for almost eight years.”
As a good Fortean, she recognized when scientists—and their spokespeople in the press—overstepped their bounds and made incredible pronouncements. Again, this topic was one Fort himself enjoyed identifying and mocking. So she sent in a clipping about a criminologist who thought north winds might cause murder epidemics; another report mentioned an asteroid that was not only invisible to the human eye but that moved at speeds so swift as to be unimaginable to the layperson. Most amusing of the three clippings of this class she contributed was one from England. Weird sounds in an attic were explained by officials as mice rolling apples.
Oltcher’s attention to traditional Fortean subjects shaded into Thayer’s version—as with the bullets from nowhere. That Oltcher had a similar view of Forteanism as Thayer is attested to by the six times that her clipping were in the running of Thayer’s (mock) “first prize.” (She never won, though.) So it is no surprise to see that she was one of the members to contribute material on the Wonet saga. It is also not a surprise—given her autodidactism—that she was mong the first members to matriculate at Thayer’s Fortean University, though if she ever submitted an essay, he did not bother to print it. Nor—given her disdain for traditional religion—that she contributed a number of clippings poking fun at religious belief. There were five, ranging from the mundane—a bishop bumped on the head by a crozier—to the ridiculous—a body dug up and stripped of its uniform, which was burned, to purge a widow of a hex—to the despicable—a South Carolina judge who decided cases by whether a defendant dropped a Bible a not.
Oltcher’s religious views interrelated to a set of political views that were also similar to Thayer’s. It is hard to characterize them exactly, since we mostly know what she was against, but they seem to run along the left-libertarianism that was common to Forteans. (There’s a hint of it in her letter to the Saturday Review, which mentioned she wanted lower taxes—but prized an intelligent citizenry more.) The connection between religion and politics was mostly clearly made in 1955, when Oltcher sent in clippings about a Connecticut man who claimed to be Jesus Christ and was first interned in an insane asylum (how did they know he wasn’t Jesus Christ) and later charged with blasphemy (clearly a violation of the constitution.) She shared Thayer’s other hobgoblins, worrying that big institutions and science were just bilking the public: the International Geophysical year was a scam; research into rocket flight was a scam; a scientist admitted radioactivity was pure “bunco”; an official was fired for claiming civil defense practices were a waste of time and money; scientists proclaimed the discovery of the largest meteor crater, though there would not be an exploration of it for a year.
Probably the purest expression of Oltcher’s skeptical attitude came in her (implied) views of medicine—which, again, were akin to Thayer’s. She valued certain traditional approaches: her reading regimen, for example, had taken her to Hippocrates, where she found that the Father of Medicine had recommended sneezing as a remedy for hiccups. (She sent a note about it to Thayer—it was her second mention in the magazine.) Oltcher contributed examples of a phenomenon that Thayer had noted: anasthesia exploding during surgery and hurting patients. She sent in material on John C. Brown, a Massachusetts farmer, and the “Master Cell,” he was peddling, which seemed to be a concrete disk with paramecia that was supposed to be soaked in water, the water then used in farm work—resulting in better crops, healed animals, and more milk and egg production. The FDA clamped down on it, but Oltcher pointed Thayer to a scientist in New Hampshire who refused to dismiss the Cell (though neither did he endorse it).
As a Pittsburgh resident, Oltcher had a front row seat to one battle between alternative and official forms of medicine, and she kept a detailed record of the happenings—even attending meetings—which she shared with the Society. It is not clear that Oltcher herself accepted the alternative theories or, indeed, used any forms of alternative medicine. The most that can be said is that she seemed to think that the originators had every right to offer their products, with as little regulation as possible. Caveat emptor. That’s the left-libertarianism I detect in her. Thayer covered the case in the late 1940s and early 1950s, though it seems mohave extended beyond these parameters. Details are hard to come by in any secondary source—no one seems to have written about it—but a sketch is all that is necessary here.
Some time in the 1940s, Philip Drosnes and Lillian Lazenby originated a novel cancer cure called Mucorhicin. Drosnes was a tire salesman; Lazenby worked in a hospital cafeteria. From what I can tell, they harvested two funguses that grew on whole wheat. In addition to the Mucorhicin—the name derived from the two yeasts—the Drosnes-Lazenby cure relied on a diet of fruits, vegetables, soft-boiled eggs, cereal, raw milk, tea, coffee, and ginger ale, but no seasoned, starchy, or fried foods. In 1948, when they were working out of a church basement, Drosnes and Lazenby were arrested for practicing medicine without a license. The charges were eventually dropped, and the clinic re-opened under the supervision of a doctor, which is about the time that Thayer took notice in print, reporting on the incident in Doubt 24 (April 1949). He recapitulated events, then offered Oltcher’s addition:
“Here is a notation I made back in March 1944. ‘Curing cancer via diet is the method proposed by Doctor John R. Davidson of Winnipeg. “Cancer is nutritional deficiency disease,” says he, and substantiates his statement by showing the results of numerous experiments on mice. Vitamins used in Dr. Davidson’s research were mainly those associated with chicken embryos and wheat germ.”
Thayer followed up in Doubt 30 (October 1950), under the headline “Drosnes-Lazenby Free”:
“The Pittsburgh cancer clinic case appears to be ended. The two people who were persecuted by a local wyper [Thayer’s word for newspaper, borrowed from Ezra Pound] for giving relief to sufferers were freed by the court after two trials. They are Philip Drosnes and Lillian Lazenby, and they are engaged in the manufacture of ‘biologically processed foods.’ The Society’s dossier on the case is a proud one, kept up to date through the long battle by MFS Oltcher.”
From reports in Doubt, it is clear that Oltcher’s Forteanism did extend beyond the Society, though, as mentioned, in ways difficult to see. The clearest case was her involvement with something called the “Lessing Circle.” As best I can make out, the Lessing Circle was a reading group, like the Great Books groups of which Oltcher had been so fond. This one formed some time in late 1950 or early 1951 (it was announced in Doubt 31, January 1951). There is not much on the “Circle,” but it seems the eponym comes from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, a German Enlightenment thinker. As with the Great Books groups, though, the lessons were wide-ranging. Thayer wrote, “MFS Oltcher is its Secretary, and she asks if other Pittsburgh Forteans would be interested. They discuss much more than Lessing. Matthew Arnold and H. G. Wells have been spoken of . . . Look into it.”
What marks this group as Fortean, in addition to Oltcher’s presence, of course, is the coordinator, George Seibel. Then 78, Seibel was head to the Carnegie Free Library (Northside) and an author—with some suitable Fortean links. He wrote on German identity (in the cleverly and presciently named “The Hyphen in American History”); he touched on Pittsburgh’s smog problem in an article for “American Mercury”: “Pittsburgh Peeks at the Stars,” 1927; he wrote a book of parables and the story of the Mormons; he wrote poetry—published by the “Lessing Circle”—and he published on the old canard, who wrote Shakespeare’s plays? Shorter works covered Zoroaster, fire-worship, economics, leprosy, and cannibalism. He knew Willa Cather. He was criticized for renting a hall to communists—and defended his actions by saying there was no good definition of ‘subversive activities.’ This was in 1949, And he was an arch skeptic—whether Fortean or not, he hewed to an ideal that Thayer would have characterized as the very definition of Forteanism. According to the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette, he said in 1947: “I believe hardly anything I see in print, very little of what I hear, and almost nothing of what I myself write or utter.” It should come as no surprise that he never went to school beyond the eighth grade.
There is a strong suggestion that Oltcher had a very similar philosophy to Seibel’s. It’s true that in the 1940s she remained rooted in Theosophical ground, but she remained skeptical even of that. Perhaps she even pushed past it. In Doubt 44, Eric Russell quoted a verse from “The Kasidah,” a poem purportedly translated from Arabic by Sir Richard Burton, but probably actually authored by him. The lines went
“Do what thy manhood bids thee do,
from none but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest die who
makes and keeps his self-made laws.
All other Life is living Death, a world
where none but phantoms dwell,
A breath, a wind, a sound, a voice, a
tinkling of the camel-bell”
Thayer wrote in May 1954, after the issue had been out for a while, a letter to Russell. He noted that one of the members had remarked on the verses—she so loved them she planned to have them tattooed on her body. (Thayer, typically, made this into a lecherous joke: “She did not say where.”) Nowhere does he name the member, but he does say that she was an “alumnus of FU.” As it happens, that is exactly how he described Oltcher in Doubt 50 (November 1955). Which makes it extremely likely that she was the one to (jocularly?) suggest getting a tattoo.
Oltcher continued her Forteanism after Thayer’s death and the end of the Fortean Society—unlike her contemporary Don Bloch (and _like_ Norman Markham) she joined the International Fortean Organization. I don’t find her name in the magazine before issue 7, in 1978; that year, she was credited—as O. Oltcher—with a cryptozoology story. She continued to contribute at least int the early 1990s, but which time she was in her mid-80s and had been associated with Forteanism for no less than 44 years. (She wrote a retrospective of the organization for, I think, volume 12, but I have not seen it.)
In the best sense of Forteanism, she was opposing the individual—not the man, and screw Burton’s “manhood”—the individual against the many large force arrayed against it. She had a strong sense of her own self.
Oltcher did not completely disappear from the records though. Starting in the mid-1940s, I find her writing for the Canadian Theosophist, first letters, then articles and book reviews. Her name shows up in online searches of magazines through the mid-1960s—by which time she was entering her sixties—with letters to the editor. Probably there is much more material out there, but what I find gives some indication of her interests and thoughts—though even more comes from her Fortean activities, and associated hobbies. To give a full sense of her, I will quote extensively from the articles rather than paraphrase them.
In February 1945, the Canadian Theosophist magazine put out volume 25, issue 12. I do not know much about the magazine, though early on it does seem to have been associated with Canadian modernist literature—as Theosophy was generally intwined with modernist literature. Oltcher’s letter to the editor dealt with literature, too, at the tail end of high modernism. She wrote,
“Editor, The Canadian Theosophist: - In Aldous Huxley's latest book Time Must Have A Stop, there are several excellent passages. I think you will be especially interested in reading the following - (if you have not already read the book):
"For those of us who are not congenitally the members of any organized church, who have found that humanism and blue-domeism are not enough, who are not content to remain in the darkness of spiritual ignorance, the squalour of vice, or that other squalour of mere respectability, the minimum working hypothesis would seem to be about as follows
"That there is a Godhead or Ground, which is the unmanifested principle of all manifestation.
"That the Ground is transcendent and immanent.
"That it is possible for human beings to love, know and, from virtually, to become actually identified with the Ground.
"That to achieve this unitive knowledge, to realize this supreme identity, is the final end and purpose of human existence.
"That there is a Law or Dharma, which must be obeyed, a Tao or Way, which must be followed, if men are to achieve their final end.
"That the more there is of I, me, mine, the less there is of the Ground; and that consequently the Tao is a Way of humility and compassion, the Dharma a Law of mortification and self-transcending awareness. Which accounts, of course, for the facts of human history. People love their egos and don't wish to mortify them, don't wish to see why they shouldn't `express their personalities' and `have a good time.' They get their good times; but also and inevitably they get wars and syphilis and revolution and alcoholism, tyranny and, in default of an adequate religious hypothesis, the choice between some lunatic idolatry, like nationalism, and a sense of complete futility and despair. Unutterable miseries! But throughout recorded history most men and women have preferred the risks, the positive certainty, of such disasters to the laborious whole-time job of trying to get to know the divine Ground of all being. In the long run we get exactly what we ask for."
A"s ever, am thoroughly enjoying The Canadian Theosophist and the divergencies of opinion. It all helps to sharpen our Thinking Sword with which we may rend the Veil. Hope the best for your son, of whom all Canada must be proud. Regards,
"Olive Oltcher.
163 Washington Ave.,
Bellevue 2, Pa., U.S.A."
The letter obviously mostly concerns Huxley, but it is possible to see through the Huxley to the points that Oltcher may have been after—and these are consistent with developing understanding of modern mystical movements, such as Theosophy. Mysticism was developing in response to secularism and science, re-inventing itself. One way it did so was through acts of imagination that could lead to what Wouter Hanegraaff has characterized as “participation”: a mystical feeling of unity that is an irresolvable aspect of the human experience. Huxley was encouraging readers to pretend that there was a godhead and that by treating it as virtually so—by acting as if, in Michael Saler’s terms—one could come to experience the unity in reality. The letter further suggests that Oltcher was neither inclined toward traditional forms of religion nor humanism: that is to say, she was thoroughly ensconced in the secular moment, which, above all, was defined by the choices of faith (and non-faith) it offered.
That is undoubtedly too much to read out of a single letter to a single magazine, and Oltcher’s next (known) contribution, a review four years later (volume 30, number 7), offers little more room for speculation and instead shows her to be a perceptive reader and an incisive writer, as well as open-minded about the (possible) faults of the Theosophical Society, even as she clearly was devoted. She wrote,
“MYTH OF THE MAGUS
"In MYTH OF THE MAGUS, by E. M. Butler and published by the Cambridge University Press, the author shows that the lives of those persons gifted with the more subtle powers of Nature seem to follow a similar pattern. The singular lives of such persons as the two Bacons, Joan of Arc, Faust, Apollonius of Tyana, Pythagoras, Moses, Solomon, Christ, Zoroaster, and others, including Madame Blavatsky, (all of whom are considered in this volume) indicate that in many particulars this resemblance is evident. The identifying characteristics of the Magi, according to the author, are:
"1. Supernatural or mysterious origin of the hero, 2. Portents at birth, 3. Perils menacing infancy. 4. Some kind of initiation,
5. Far-distant wanderings, 6. A magical contest, 7. A trial, or persecution, 8. A last scene,
9. A violent or mysterious death, 10. A resurrection and/or ascension.
Often the records are based on mythical or imaginative data or on commonly accepted rumor, rather than historical fact, so that the conclusions are not necessarily final nor authoritative, but using the data at hand, Miss Butler has analyzed the selected lives and checked them against the list which she believes to be representative at least in part, of all magi, and what follows is often highly interesting reading.
"Theosophists will be especially interested in the chapter MADAME AND THE MASTERS wherein once again, the much maligned H.P.B. is ushered into public view, this time to be measured for a possible fitting of the magus cape.
Miss Butler's criticisms are not always complimentary (as for instance when she calls Faust ". . . that scrubby little medieval sorcerer . . .") but she does not vilify nor is she inclined to be vindictive. I don't think Miss Butler believes in Masters, but she has the good grace to say, "As far as such Masters are concerned, the burden of disproof is on the sceptics. There is a great deal of evidence in their favor, and since it is next to impossible to investigate it, one should keep an open mind."
Perhaps the chief merit of the treatise (which runs to about 270 pages) lies in the attention focused on the Society and its founder and the possible interest stimulated in further investigating the books of H.P.B. It is always stimulating, I think, to members of the Society to read the reactions of outsiders to the Society and its work, whether they be an indictment of its methods or a somewhat wilted bouquet for its accomplishments. The book contains a wealth of bibliographical material which will be of value to the student.
Mrs. Olive Oltcher
187 Belonda St.,
Pittsburgh 11, Pa."
Oltcher’s skepticism—explicitly Fortean—as well as her labile reading was on display earlier that year (vol. 30, number 2) in an article she wrote for the magazine. She was a thoughtful woman of wide reading, though the object about which her ideas orbited remained Theosophical. She wrote,
"WAS FREUD MISTAKEN ABOUT THE OEDIPUS MYTH?
"The interpretation of myths, dreams, parables, etc., may be varied considerably merely by emphasizing one feature of the story and slurring over what is not of immediate use. Anyone can come up with a different solution (even an opposite one) by featuring the slurred-over event or idea and ignoring what had formerly been stressed. We are inclined to read into a myth just what we wish it to signify.
"I heard Erich Fromm on the radio program Invitation To Learning today discussing Nietzsche and the ideal of morality. I hope Nietzsche meant what Dr. Fromm thinks he meant. If Nietzsche's idea of a superman was an individual - so evolved that his higher self manifested in all his thinking, then surely we want to encourage the concept of supermen, and if this were actually Nietzsche's premise, certain it is that he has been misunderstood these many years. Given that interpretation, this theory of supermen would be not unlike Plato's philosopher-statesmen who were men of super-ethics and principles, possessing the understanding and wisdom necessary for the proper administration of a state. They were dedicated, in other words, by their superior ability and education to so rule the proletariat that the latter would live in peace and contentment.
"Is it possible that Plato also has been misunderstood by his enthusiastic followers? In The Platonic Legend, by Warner Fite, the author has no illusions about Plato (or Socrates, either) as a Master of Morals. Moral ideas in our sense, he says, were far from the Platonic mind. Although prejudiced against the beloved Master, some things pointed out by Professor Fite are well taken. It does not seem to occur to him,
however, that Plato's writings may be considered other than literally but Plato himself has suggested that there is an esoteric interpretation for the few.
The thing I want to emphasize is not whether Dr. Fromm or Professor Fite are right or wrong, but the necessity at all times of maintaining that Fortean "suspension of judgment" wherever there is room for doubt. [Emphasis mine.]
"Dr. Fromm's conclusions on the Oedipus myth are certainly worth our careful analysis. He has investigated with considerable thoroughness the myth from the Freudian point of view and upon further probing and analyzing the symbology, he has come up with a different interpretation. The author's conclusion is that the Oedipus myth is not centered on the crime of incest, but on the conflict between patriarchal and matriarchal principles. He understands Sophocles' trilogy as "an attack against the victorious patriarchal order by the representatives of the defeated matriarchal system . . . ."
"Considering the trilogy as a whole, the struggle seems to Dr. Fromm to be one of opposition to paternal authority, having its roots in a preference for a matriarchal system of government which he believes may have preceded the reign of gods on Mt. Olympus. The matriarchal system stressed equality of all men, and had for its goal the happiness of men. It emphasized the ties of blood, ties to the soil, and a passive acceptance of all natural phenomena, whereas the patriarchal form recognized obedience to authority as its main factor and was characterized by respect for man - made law, by the predominance of rational thought and by man's effort to change natural phenomena.
"All this is brought out in an article "The Oedipus Myth" by Erich Fromm in the January issue of Scientific American. Fromm cites the Swiss scholar J. J. Bachofen whose theory is the basis for Dr. Fromm's interpretation of the ill-starred Oedipus. The theories of both Fromm and Freud were based on practically the same fundamentals. The difference lay in the inference these men drew as to the relation these theses bore to each other. In his Mutterrecht (published in 1861) he suggests that (and I am quoting Fromm) " . . . in the beginning of human history sexual relations were promiscuous; as a result only the mother's parenthood was unquestionable. To her alone could consanguinity be traced. She was, therefore, the authority and lawgiver - in the family group, in society and in religion. On the basis of his analysis of religious documents in Greek and Roman antiquity, Bachofen came to the conclusion that the religion of the Olympian gods was preceded by a religion in which goddesses, motherlike figures, were the supreme deities." (Goethe mentioned in reading Plutarch he found that "in Grecian antiquity the Mothers are spoken of as Goddesses.")
"And to quote Bachofen himself: "The relationship through which mankind has first grown into civilization, which is the beginning of the development of every virtue and of the formation of the nobler aspects of human existence is the matriarchal principle, which becomes effective as the principle of love, unity, and peace . . . Its principle is that of universality, whereas the patriarchal principle is that of restrictions . . . . The idea of the universal brotherhood of man is rooted in the principle of motherhood, and this idea vanishes with the development of patriarchal society."
"The Oedipus complex (wrongly supposed by Freud to be a boy's incestuous strivings toward his mother and his resulting hostility against his father) is, in Dr. Fromm's eyes, a complex concerned with the rebellion of the son against the pressure of the father's authority - an authority rooted in the patriarchal, authoritarian structure of society. “. . . this kind of authority tends to break his will, his spontaneity, his independence. But since man is not born to be broken, the child fights against the authority represented by his parents; he fights not only for his freedom from pressure but also for his freedom to be himself, a full - fledged human being and not an automaton. In this struggle some children are more successful than others; most of them are defeated to some extent in their fight for freedom. The ways in which the defeat is brought about are manifold, but whatever they are, the scars left in the child's unsuccessful fight against irrational authority are to be found at the bottom of every neurosis. Such a scar is represented in a syndrome of which the most important features are a weakening or paralysis of the individual's originality and spontaneity, a weakening of the self and the substitution of a pseudo self in which the feeling of "I am" is dulled and replaced by the experience of self as the sum total of expectations others have about the self, and finally a substitution of heteronomy for autonomy.
"Does our interpretation of the Oedipus myth and of the Oedipus complex imply that Freud's theory was without foundation?
"Freud observed three facts follows:
FIRST: He noted the presence of sexual strivings in children.
SECOND: Freud observed that the ties by which children are bound to their parents are often not severed at a time when, in the normal development, they should be. He concluded this irrational 'fixation' to be found in all neuroses.
THIRD: Freud recognized that the conflict between father and son is characteristic of patriarchal cultures, and he demonstrated particularly how an unsuccessful rebellion against the father's authority and the fears resulting from the defeat form the basis for a neurotic development.
"These observations he synthesized into his theory. He assumed the second phenomenon (attachment or fixation to the mother) was rooted in the first, and the third, a result of this sexual rivalry."
Fromm shows that the tie to the mother is not essentially a sexual tie, and the conflict between father and son has little to do with sexual rivalry, but is characteristic of patriarchal society and family life.
There is nothing in ISIS UNVEILED or THE SECRET DOCTRINE anent the occult symbology of this myth but I am sure we could read one into it if we tried.
Mrs. Olive Oltcher.
187 Belonda St.,
Pittsburgh 11, Pa."
That skepticism recurred the following year (volume 30, no 11: her third appearance in this volume), applied more directly to Theosophical doctrine. In 1950, Oltcher took up the subject of reincarnation, a common subject among Theosophists, though it had would not become an object of popular contemplation for another couple of years, with the publication of “The Search for Bridey Murphy” (1956). Oltcher’s writing is still precise, but, in line with her esoteric subject, the words themselves become more obscure: that is to say, she uses a potentially vague vocabulary in a careful way. She wrote,
“SOME REFLECTIONS ON REINCARNATION
“by Olive Oltcher
“Reincarnation, one of the fundamental concepts of Theosophy, is based primarily on the ideas of justice and evolution. Our sense of justice, is outraged at the thought of one man sent forth on his earth journey equipped with all the advantages of success and another with several counts already against him. If there be justice, this situation must have evolved from some conditions and actions set up in the past by each individual himself.
“Compassionate people look kindly upon the hypothesis, and its disproof has never to my knowledge been seriously attempted, but it remains for the individual to verify the tenet himself, if he can. Certain mystical knowledge is claimed, by some which, at least to them, is sufficient proof. The early mystery schools taught the doctrine and perhaps satisfied their initiates by adumbration or proof, that reincarnation was a fact. The only religions to repudiate it today are the Christian and Mohammedan, and within the Christian Church it has been acknowledged by various sects. Giordano Bruno, J. B. van Helmont, David Hume, and many another mental titan accepted it. But the label is bandied about as if everybody meant the same thing, when, in fact, modern Theosophists mean something different than did the Bakongs of Borneo, for instance, who believe their dead reincarnate as bear-cats.
“From the Theosophical viewpoint, let us examine the evolutionary factor, fundamental to this philosophical concept. Theosophists argue that if evolution be a fact, reincarnation also must be implicit, since Man's evolution, to be such, must progress from stages anterior to the human kingdom, to supra-human categories. This, obviously, does not happen in the course of one incarnation. Also, say the Theosophists, the 'karma" or results of one's activities, thoughts, etc., on this stratum of being must be rewarded or expiated as the case may be, within the same framework of existence. Along such lines of reasoning is the theory of reincarnation justified by many thinking people in the West.
“Evolution is a process whereby elements, qualities, aspects, or groups of differentiated characteristics of a being progress from a less- perfected to a more efficient or more complete state or stage. This being so, say the Theosophists, misconceptions like the old chestnut about beating, or even eating, one's own grandmother, are ridiculous since no one comes back in a less evolved body than that which he has left.
“Yet, involution is as evident a fact as is evolution. From a teleological viewpoint, we admit the emerging, sustaining, and final destruction of races or nations as part of a greater cosmic plan of evolution, yet we are constrained from justifying a man's descent and fall from grace on any such principle. That he may serve as a horrible example to the rest of us is hardly a proper philosophical attitude either, but we may tentatively offer him as Exhibit One in establishing our thesis that there is an inverse - evolution whereby a man may become less human than he was to begin with. Nor can we set ourselves up as judges, except in extreme cases, of an individual's standing in the evolutionary scheme of things. He may be slipping fast as, say, a sadist, and yet fulfill an esthetic function as a creator of great beauty in one of the arts. We have to go easy with our non sequiturs. He's climbing up the evolutionary ladder with his right foot and slipping down with his left. Eventually, should his evil tendencies overwhelm his whole being he will reach a negative evolutionary stage and we may then, and only then, point our finger and throw our stone.
“All right. This hypothetical and potential Mephistopheles proceeds to degrade himself until at his death he has practically reached his moral nadir. Shouldn't he, then, by the same law of justice we prate so much about, receive in a subsequent incarnation, a body befitting the disintegrating character of his ego? Don't punishments fit crimes in supernal Courts of Justice either? Disregarding a theory merely because it may be ugly is not worthy of searchers for Truth. When we begin to gold-leaf our beliefs, we are knocking on a false door that never will open.
“There is another tenet of reincarnation that has made me ponder again and again. "Time" is usually considered no object in the evolutionary pattern. It is immaterial to Theosophists how many times we return to complete our cycle of experience on this globe. But, personally, it makes quite a difference to me, especially when one's very dear friends show a tendency to evolve at a speedy rate which may merit them a transference to some higher planetary chain of life. Then again, call me a product of my age if you will, but why, if the goal of evolution be so grand, couldn't the plan include, instead of one long, long path of reincarnations, a plurality (innumerable suits me) of parallel lives which would gather experience of many differing varieties and exploit all the categories of existence from the densest to the phenomenal, and also the more tenuous? Perhaps this is so and we cannot recall our other miscellaneous selves, except in dreams sometimes, or in vague intuitional flashes?
“I was once very sure what the purpose of life was; now I wonder, like the veriest beginning ponderer. Only of this am I sure, that we should avoid dogmatism no matter how dear our concept may be to ourselves. After all, there is so little we know, and that little may be surprisingly erroneous in many of its facets.
“187 Belonda St.,
Pittsburgh 11, Pa.”
A letter to the Saturday Review in 1951 (6 January) gives some insight into how Oltcher came to her broad knowledge, as well as he continued disinclination toward formal education—disdain would be too strong a word. The Review advertised the Fortean Society a lot early in its history, and also praised Fort. In this case, though, Oltcher was responding to an article by Ben Ray Redman which argued against the “Great Books” movement, which had taken over the University of Chicago and was being spread around the country through local groups. (It’s clear that Oltcher belonged to one.) The idea was the Americans could be cultured by reading a list of great books—an idea that Redman found naive and overly deferential to the common intelligence, but that Oltcher thought was fruitful, even if she viewed it through her usual skeptical lens. She wrote,
“SIR: Regarding some of Mr. Redman’s comments I think he has failed to observe the drop of ointment in his cup of files. The very fact that there are from three to perhaps a
dozen astute people gathered in numerous groups throughout the nation who can intelligently discuss the great thinkers of the past, is to me of greater comfort than a reduction in taxes.
“Perhaps Mr. Redman is correct, yet I have found Aristophanes and the other Greek dramatists most delightful, without the benefit of "much detailed information"—in fact without any specific study preliminary to the reading of these dramas.
“I note that Mr; Redman in three instances remarks about the average individual having only limited time at his disposal. One portions out his time as he sees fit, and if canasta and television suffer in the process in order to study Homer and Sextus Empiricus,
the individual himself gains in perspicuity, sense of values, and mental agility. And I should like Mr. Redman to remember, when looking askance at the choice of texts, that
there never has existed a booklist that appealed in its entirety to more than two or three persons.
“I agree with Mr. Redman that groups often digress from the subject. I hope they continue to do so. I have learned more incidental knowledge by this method than I would have thought possible, and I now look forward to the digressions along with
the main theme. Had I not heard from members of other groups I would have concluded that the group I attend is composed of members possessing especially superior talent, but the enthusiasm of friends attending groups in other cities is equal to my own.
“OLIVE OLTCHER.
Pittsburgh, Pa.”
Clearly, she was putting this reading to work in contemplating the issues of the day—and, indeed, has a wide diet of reading. For the next appearance I find of her is a letter to the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences (!) in 1952. She had read an article on the current state of biology and processed it through Greek mythology and history:
“Gentlemen:
“I have just read Jean Rostand’s article “Biology and the Burden of Our Times” and find it echoes some of my own thoughts. How easy it would be to shift all responsibility, as did Helen and the other ancient Greeks, to the gods! In re-reading _The Odyssey_ I note:
“‘Presently she (Helen) cast a drug into the wine whereof they drank, a drug to lull all pain and anger, and bring forgetfulness of every sorry. Whoso should drink a draught thereof, when it is mingled in the bowl on that day he would let no tear fall down his cheeks, not though his mother and his father died, not though men slew how brother or dear son with the sword before his face, and his own eyes behled it. Medicines of such virtue and so helpful had the daughter of Zeus.’
“Are we responsible for our acts, or are we not, who is to say? Are we an ever changing composite of forces? Perhaps the forces themselves are not ‘we’ at all; but some minute unidentifiable ‘something’ which causes their cohesion my be you and I. I wonder, have any of the Socrates’ of the past, so glib in telling is to _know ourselves_, ever accomplished the task themselves?
“The term ‘parthogenesis’ is used in M. Rostand’s article. Is it now being used instead of ‘parthenogenesis?’
“I greatly appreciate such provocative articles as this.
Sincerely yours,
Mrs. Olive Oltcher.”
Clearly a careful reader (the magazine admitted it had mis-spelled parthenogenesis), Oltcher was also developing a distinct writing style, seemingly oblique but, in fact, precise, her choice of words and ordering often surprising but not obscure. She was also pressing against her own convictions, weighing them. Rostand had surveyed the possibilities of eugenics in the near future—prolonging life, choosing the sex of children, altering human moral and intellectual characteristics through genetic manipulation—what he called “therapy of the spirit”—virgin births, and the creation of supermen. This was evolution of a sort, albeit artificial. And although it was mostly pie in the sky—and remains so—it contacted directly with Oltcher’s own Theosophical ideas about the evolution of the human being. How were futures stages of humankind to be reached: through “natural” spiritual progression or some other means? (Incidentally, one sees here the connection to dissident Theosophical theories that would accuse Atlanteans or aliens of genetically altering earlier human races.)
The last substantive piece I find by Oltcher came a little bit before her letter to the BAS. It was a review for the _Canadian Theosophist_ of a book by Max Freedom Long, who was another Fortean, associated closely with N. Meade Layne and R. DeWitt Miller—fully embedded in the southern California occult scene of the post-War years. Long was interested in theories of magic, especially those developed in Hawaii, and this interest rooted his Forteanism. She wrote,
“Max Freedom Long's book, The Secret Science Behind Miracles (Kosmon Press, Los Angeles) written in 1947, is fundamentally a study of the philosophy of the (now extinct) kahunas of Hawaii, and the application of their methods to present-day needs of Man in his struggle for health and security.
“Mr. Long's investigation is intelligent and sincere, and if some of his hypotheses seem to verge on the fantastic, that is only to say they are like any other hypothesis before it becomes an established axiom. Many of his conclusions are theosophically tenable and all are interesting.
“The kahunas were agnostic, limiting themselves to acquiring knowledge of the realms immediately above and below the human kingdom. Man has, according to the kahunas, in addition to his physical body, what is analogous to a subconscious mind operating through a subtle body (which is capable of reaching out to things and persons at any distance); a conscious mind with its even more tenuous body; and a super-conscious mind with the most rarified body of the three ‘shadowy’ sheaths. The lowest mind or spirit, contains memory and uses a vital force called "mana;" the conscious mind or spirit, can reason but not remember, and its vital force which is correspondingly stronger, is called ‘Manamana;’ the superconscious mind, which has divine powers of realization, uses a very potent vital power known as ‘mana loa.’ These three bodies are interconnected and penetrate the physical body. The superconscious is the highest level that Man is capable of contacting or comprehending, and this the kahunas called ‘Aumakua’ (note the ‘aum’).
“The word ‘mana’ was interesting to me. This vital force, says the author, ‘is electrical in its nature and shows strong magnetic qualities. The invisible substance through which the vital force acts is called `aka' or `shadowy body stuff’.
“The bodily electricity or low ‘mana,’ says Mr. Long, ‘has the amazing characteristic which is THAT IT RESPONDS TO THE COMMANDS AND DIRECTIONS OF THE INDIVIDUAL.’ Mild suggestion is sufficient, but a physical stimulus will facilitate results. (The kahunas use ti leaves in many of their magical performances.) Before we can effectively use our powers, we must recognize that we possess them. Then we may make our demands; they (our powers) will not act without our will.
“‘Obsession' is discussed at length, but I believe there is little or no danger of obsession unless we ourselves invite, by our attitude, thoughts, or conscious invitation, such obsessing entities. The low vital force, or mana, may be analogous to the theosophical conception of ‘kundalini' since the prodigies accomplished seem similar.
“To me, Mr. Long's book is a psychological treatise and has nothing to do with religion. Its merit lies in its investigation of the ‘little known powers in Man,’ and as such is a profitable study. Anything that adds to our knowledge of the working of the minds of human beings in other environments than our own, is worth our time and attention. The longings inherent in mankind are often surprisingly alike, even in the most diverse of cultures and civilizations.
“I sometimes had the feeling, when reading certain passages in the book, that Mr. Long strayed from the plausible, but certainly, there is much in the book worth remembering and pondering.
Olive Oltcher. 187 Belonda St., Pittsburgh, 11, Pa.”
It wasn’t her best bit of writing. She was soft-pedaling and, pretty clearly, wasn’t quite sure what to make of Long’s occult theories, and so dissected them, pulling out pieces, but not offering a prolonged consideration. One gets the feeling the review was tossed off. Still, it shows her wrestling with ideas common in Fortean circles. The only other piece of writing I can find of hers came many years later, in 1965. (She was mentioned as a paying member of the Theosophist Magazine in 1960, but I have not found her writing there.) That last piece was a letter to Esquire magazine. I have not actually seen that letter.
Olive Oltcher died 23 April 1997. She was 92 years old.
Given the relatively scanty information I have on her, it is no surprise that I do not know when or how Oltcher first came across Fort. Certainly, he was known in Theosophical circles—there were a number of Theosophical Forteans. The “Theosophical Forum”—a magazine—mentioned Fort and the Society in 1942, for example. Nor do I really have a sense of how broad her Forteanism was. Beside the reference to Fort in the Canadian Theosophist, al of her Forteanism, as I now it, comes from her interactions with the Fortean Society. Those, though, were both deep and broad, and shed some light on her ideas.
By my count, her name was mentioned at least 66 times in the Fortean Society magazine; while a lot of her activity was concentrated in the late 1940s and early 1950s—although, to be fair, that could be an artefact of Thayer condensing his credit-giving practices—her contributions could be found into the very last issue. All told, she appeared in 32 issues, starting with Doubt 15 (summer 1946)—about a year-and-a-half after her first letter in the “Canadian Theosophist.” At the time, she would have been 41 years old; her son around ten, and so she may have had the time and the family enough financial stability to allow her to develop her interests.
It is difficult to get a full grasp on her interests, because a lot of the credits that she received were generic—Thayer doffed a hat at her sending in something—or vague—she was credited with sending in material on a subject, but her name wasn’t attached to a particular clipping. Still, there’s so much material that some sense can be made. She was drawn to that Fortean warhorse, strange falls—at least eleven clippings, including the Forteanly famous Markham, Louisiana, rain of fishes and money falling in Syracuse, New York. She contributed to Thayer’s hated subject, flying saucers: seven attributions. She covered anomalies such as the mysterious death of fish in South Dakota (that was mentioned by rocketeer R. L. Farnsworth and Gordon Hollyer); red tides (which Thayer blamed on the army dumping poisons to justify buying _more_ poisons); neons disappearing from the legs of women in several cities; a statue that wept when it was kissed; a blast of hot air in Lisbon, following a hurricane, that shot thermometers to around 150 degrees Fahrenheit; an inexplicable hum in Britain that persisted from the late 1940s into the 1950s; and footprints seen on the bottom go the ocean. One could imagine any of these being found in Fort’s books.
Oltcher had a keen eye for coincidences, another trope common in Fort’s books: I count eight of this species, the best of which was about a French man who tried to drown a kitten, only to slip into the pond and himself drown, while the cat scrabbled out. She sent in reports of mysterious explosions (2); bullets from nowhere (1—this referring to a feared sniper in Philadelphia); poisonous smogs (1–remember, this was one of the phenomena cited as important when the Fortean Society was first founded); and what would now be called cryptozoology (5—though some of these bordered on other topics, such as musings on why whales beached themselves, and a four-hundred pound shark found on a Fall River, Massachusetts’ street that might have been an example of a weird rain).
She recognized, too, what was just weird in the news—akin to what might be called “high strangeness” in Fortean circles today. There were two directly attributable to her. She quoted a radio operator who said the thoughts of Christ and Plato still circulated in the air and might someday be receivable by radios. Best, though—perhaps the best bit of Forteana in Doubt’s entire run—was a want-ad she found in the Washington, D.C., Times-Herald. It ran 28 January 1948, and though Thayer promised a follow-up, there never was one, making the story even better, actually. The personal said, “Anyone, anywhere, who saw a man become invisible eight years ago on May 3, 1940, please write immediately to [TT erased] as an invisible man has been with me for almost eight years.”
As a good Fortean, she recognized when scientists—and their spokespeople in the press—overstepped their bounds and made incredible pronouncements. Again, this topic was one Fort himself enjoyed identifying and mocking. So she sent in a clipping about a criminologist who thought north winds might cause murder epidemics; another report mentioned an asteroid that was not only invisible to the human eye but that moved at speeds so swift as to be unimaginable to the layperson. Most amusing of the three clippings of this class she contributed was one from England. Weird sounds in an attic were explained by officials as mice rolling apples.
Oltcher’s attention to traditional Fortean subjects shaded into Thayer’s version—as with the bullets from nowhere. That Oltcher had a similar view of Forteanism as Thayer is attested to by the six times that her clipping were in the running of Thayer’s (mock) “first prize.” (She never won, though.) So it is no surprise to see that she was one of the members to contribute material on the Wonet saga. It is also not a surprise—given her autodidactism—that she was mong the first members to matriculate at Thayer’s Fortean University, though if she ever submitted an essay, he did not bother to print it. Nor—given her disdain for traditional religion—that she contributed a number of clippings poking fun at religious belief. There were five, ranging from the mundane—a bishop bumped on the head by a crozier—to the ridiculous—a body dug up and stripped of its uniform, which was burned, to purge a widow of a hex—to the despicable—a South Carolina judge who decided cases by whether a defendant dropped a Bible a not.
Oltcher’s religious views interrelated to a set of political views that were also similar to Thayer’s. It is hard to characterize them exactly, since we mostly know what she was against, but they seem to run along the left-libertarianism that was common to Forteans. (There’s a hint of it in her letter to the Saturday Review, which mentioned she wanted lower taxes—but prized an intelligent citizenry more.) The connection between religion and politics was mostly clearly made in 1955, when Oltcher sent in clippings about a Connecticut man who claimed to be Jesus Christ and was first interned in an insane asylum (how did they know he wasn’t Jesus Christ) and later charged with blasphemy (clearly a violation of the constitution.) She shared Thayer’s other hobgoblins, worrying that big institutions and science were just bilking the public: the International Geophysical year was a scam; research into rocket flight was a scam; a scientist admitted radioactivity was pure “bunco”; an official was fired for claiming civil defense practices were a waste of time and money; scientists proclaimed the discovery of the largest meteor crater, though there would not be an exploration of it for a year.
Probably the purest expression of Oltcher’s skeptical attitude came in her (implied) views of medicine—which, again, were akin to Thayer’s. She valued certain traditional approaches: her reading regimen, for example, had taken her to Hippocrates, where she found that the Father of Medicine had recommended sneezing as a remedy for hiccups. (She sent a note about it to Thayer—it was her second mention in the magazine.) Oltcher contributed examples of a phenomenon that Thayer had noted: anasthesia exploding during surgery and hurting patients. She sent in material on John C. Brown, a Massachusetts farmer, and the “Master Cell,” he was peddling, which seemed to be a concrete disk with paramecia that was supposed to be soaked in water, the water then used in farm work—resulting in better crops, healed animals, and more milk and egg production. The FDA clamped down on it, but Oltcher pointed Thayer to a scientist in New Hampshire who refused to dismiss the Cell (though neither did he endorse it).
As a Pittsburgh resident, Oltcher had a front row seat to one battle between alternative and official forms of medicine, and she kept a detailed record of the happenings—even attending meetings—which she shared with the Society. It is not clear that Oltcher herself accepted the alternative theories or, indeed, used any forms of alternative medicine. The most that can be said is that she seemed to think that the originators had every right to offer their products, with as little regulation as possible. Caveat emptor. That’s the left-libertarianism I detect in her. Thayer covered the case in the late 1940s and early 1950s, though it seems mohave extended beyond these parameters. Details are hard to come by in any secondary source—no one seems to have written about it—but a sketch is all that is necessary here.
Some time in the 1940s, Philip Drosnes and Lillian Lazenby originated a novel cancer cure called Mucorhicin. Drosnes was a tire salesman; Lazenby worked in a hospital cafeteria. From what I can tell, they harvested two funguses that grew on whole wheat. In addition to the Mucorhicin—the name derived from the two yeasts—the Drosnes-Lazenby cure relied on a diet of fruits, vegetables, soft-boiled eggs, cereal, raw milk, tea, coffee, and ginger ale, but no seasoned, starchy, or fried foods. In 1948, when they were working out of a church basement, Drosnes and Lazenby were arrested for practicing medicine without a license. The charges were eventually dropped, and the clinic re-opened under the supervision of a doctor, which is about the time that Thayer took notice in print, reporting on the incident in Doubt 24 (April 1949). He recapitulated events, then offered Oltcher’s addition:
“Here is a notation I made back in March 1944. ‘Curing cancer via diet is the method proposed by Doctor John R. Davidson of Winnipeg. “Cancer is nutritional deficiency disease,” says he, and substantiates his statement by showing the results of numerous experiments on mice. Vitamins used in Dr. Davidson’s research were mainly those associated with chicken embryos and wheat germ.”
Thayer followed up in Doubt 30 (October 1950), under the headline “Drosnes-Lazenby Free”:
“The Pittsburgh cancer clinic case appears to be ended. The two people who were persecuted by a local wyper [Thayer’s word for newspaper, borrowed from Ezra Pound] for giving relief to sufferers were freed by the court after two trials. They are Philip Drosnes and Lillian Lazenby, and they are engaged in the manufacture of ‘biologically processed foods.’ The Society’s dossier on the case is a proud one, kept up to date through the long battle by MFS Oltcher.”
From reports in Doubt, it is clear that Oltcher’s Forteanism did extend beyond the Society, though, as mentioned, in ways difficult to see. The clearest case was her involvement with something called the “Lessing Circle.” As best I can make out, the Lessing Circle was a reading group, like the Great Books groups of which Oltcher had been so fond. This one formed some time in late 1950 or early 1951 (it was announced in Doubt 31, January 1951). There is not much on the “Circle,” but it seems the eponym comes from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, a German Enlightenment thinker. As with the Great Books groups, though, the lessons were wide-ranging. Thayer wrote, “MFS Oltcher is its Secretary, and she asks if other Pittsburgh Forteans would be interested. They discuss much more than Lessing. Matthew Arnold and H. G. Wells have been spoken of . . . Look into it.”
What marks this group as Fortean, in addition to Oltcher’s presence, of course, is the coordinator, George Seibel. Then 78, Seibel was head to the Carnegie Free Library (Northside) and an author—with some suitable Fortean links. He wrote on German identity (in the cleverly and presciently named “The Hyphen in American History”); he touched on Pittsburgh’s smog problem in an article for “American Mercury”: “Pittsburgh Peeks at the Stars,” 1927; he wrote a book of parables and the story of the Mormons; he wrote poetry—published by the “Lessing Circle”—and he published on the old canard, who wrote Shakespeare’s plays? Shorter works covered Zoroaster, fire-worship, economics, leprosy, and cannibalism. He knew Willa Cather. He was criticized for renting a hall to communists—and defended his actions by saying there was no good definition of ‘subversive activities.’ This was in 1949, And he was an arch skeptic—whether Fortean or not, he hewed to an ideal that Thayer would have characterized as the very definition of Forteanism. According to the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette, he said in 1947: “I believe hardly anything I see in print, very little of what I hear, and almost nothing of what I myself write or utter.” It should come as no surprise that he never went to school beyond the eighth grade.
There is a strong suggestion that Oltcher had a very similar philosophy to Seibel’s. It’s true that in the 1940s she remained rooted in Theosophical ground, but she remained skeptical even of that. Perhaps she even pushed past it. In Doubt 44, Eric Russell quoted a verse from “The Kasidah,” a poem purportedly translated from Arabic by Sir Richard Burton, but probably actually authored by him. The lines went
“Do what thy manhood bids thee do,
from none but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest die who
makes and keeps his self-made laws.
All other Life is living Death, a world
where none but phantoms dwell,
A breath, a wind, a sound, a voice, a
tinkling of the camel-bell”
Thayer wrote in May 1954, after the issue had been out for a while, a letter to Russell. He noted that one of the members had remarked on the verses—she so loved them she planned to have them tattooed on her body. (Thayer, typically, made this into a lecherous joke: “She did not say where.”) Nowhere does he name the member, but he does say that she was an “alumnus of FU.” As it happens, that is exactly how he described Oltcher in Doubt 50 (November 1955). Which makes it extremely likely that she was the one to (jocularly?) suggest getting a tattoo.
Oltcher continued her Forteanism after Thayer’s death and the end of the Fortean Society—unlike her contemporary Don Bloch (and _like_ Norman Markham) she joined the International Fortean Organization. I don’t find her name in the magazine before issue 7, in 1978; that year, she was credited—as O. Oltcher—with a cryptozoology story. She continued to contribute at least int the early 1990s, but which time she was in her mid-80s and had been associated with Forteanism for no less than 44 years. (She wrote a retrospective of the organization for, I think, volume 12, but I have not seen it.)
In the best sense of Forteanism, she was opposing the individual—not the man, and screw Burton’s “manhood”—the individual against the many large force arrayed against it. She had a strong sense of her own self.
