The Dennis Wheatley 'Museum' - Champions of Reincarnation: Dennis Wheatley & Joan Grant

Postscript : How 'real' was Joan Grant's 'Far Memory' ?

I'd love to say it was real, but sadly I can't.

I know that some commentators have said it was, but they haven't done a proper analysis. To save those who don't want to be bogged down in detail from reading a lengthy analysis, I have written this as a summary. If anyone wishes to read a more extended piece, they can do so by clicking here. I could have gone into further detail in both pieces, but there seemed little merit in going further than setting out the biggest objections, and for good measure a few smaller ones. I have primarily critiqued 'Winged Pharaoh', although I have also touched on Joan's other Far Memory books about Egypt. I have restricted myself to these books because while I have a degree in Egyptology, I have no specialist knowledge of the other periods. This probably doesn't matter because most of the specific information that one would use to prove or disprove the thesis of Far Memory is contained in Winged Pharaoh.

I have used three tests.

1. How well does what Joan wrote correspond to what was known archaeologically at the time?

2. To the extent that significant archaeological discoveries have been made since Joan wrote 'Winged Pharaoh', did Joan have pre-knowledge of them, or was she ignorant of them?

3. Are there any important 'facts' in 'Winged Pharaoh' which might in theory be provable, but where the archaeology is currently neutral or silent, and which might dramatically modify the conclusions drawn from the previous two tests?

While the third is to an extent an 'open' test, 'Winged Pharaoh' fails to satisfy the first two tests in material ways.

This may come as a surprise to some, particularly if they have read some of the poorer journalistic pieces on the subject; some of which have been inaccurate to the point of near irresponsibility. As an example of such poor journalism, a journalist accredited to UPI wrote in the 1960s that:

'None of the material in these books of Joan Grant's has been successfully challenged by archaeologists or historians. And much of it has been new information at the time of its publication which only later was verified by further findings of the scholars of the field.'

This was complete tosh. Academics had not challenged first because no-one had asked them to do so, second because it was not part of their job, and third because it was so clear to them (to the extent that any read it) that it was not Far Memory and they would have seen that there was no point in doing a comprehensive analysis. It is only because they have kept understandably silent that for the correctness of the record I am not. Even on YouTube and Wikipedia I note that there are only what one might call non-professional analyses; but this is probably for the reasons I have stated. Archaeologists aren't in the realm of critiquing fantastic literature; and even if they did they might well use soft words to placate their audiences. In these pages I shall assume devotees of this Museum are made of sterner stuff and would appreciate the truth.

Without going into any great detail as I have done so in the attached paper, here are two examples of how Joan fails the first test :

1. She said (and I do not doubt she believed it) that she accessed her life as Sekeeta by 'psychomertising' a turquoise scarab that her mother placed on her breast when she was taken for an initiation. This is problematic because the First Dynasty was c 3,000 B.C. and at that time the Egyptians used 'cylinder seals' instead of scarabs, and the two are completely unmistakable one from the other. One looks like a small tube and the other like a beetle. Amuletic scarabs came into vogue in the 'First Intermediate Period' circa 2,100 B.C., and heart scarabs, the scarabs that were placed on the chest of the deceased, in the New Kingdom, circa 1,500 B.C.

   Joan psychometrising a scarab and finding it came from the First Dynasty is therefore chronologically extremely problematic.

   The whereabouts of the turquoise scarab are as far as I am aware currently unknown. If it ever comes to light, it should be quite readily datable, because scarabs evolved stylistically over the time they were used in Ancient Egypt.

2. According to Joan's Far Memory, the Ancient Pharaohs believed in reincarnation. Specifically, they believed that when their spirit left their body for the last time, it went into a new incarnation in another time period and in a completely different body.

   This concept would have been completely alien to the Ancient Egyptians, and is completely at odds with the voluminous archaeological record. The Ancient Egyptian royals of the period built huge pits into which their preserved bodies were lain with their favourite possessions and vast underground larders of beverages and foodstuffs, because they thought the dead soul would need these to keep going in the afterlife.

   Furthermore, as well as the pit burials, these Pharoahs (or at least four of them, including Joan's alleged father) had vast above ground complexes associated with them nearer the floodplain, and these are not mentioned in Joan's Far Memories. Also, and this was not known at the time Joan was writing (so I stray into Test 2), a number of the kings of this era were buried with boats or large models of them.

   In addition, and this was known at the time that Joan wrote, they were surrounded by the tombs of their retainers. In the case of 'Sekeeta's father', he was surrounded by many hundreds of them. When he excavated, Petrie found that some of their bodies were in what he regarded as un-natural poses, and the fact that the superstructure covered both the Pharaoh's tomb and many of the retainers' tombs strongly suggests that the retainers were slaughtered at the time of his death so they could accompany their master into the afterlife and render him uninterrupted service. This conclusion that the retainers met an un-natural death has recently been given further support from forensic analysis, which suggests strangulation as the cause of death. This is all somewhat similar to what the First Emperor of China was to do at his burial some three thousand years later.

   Joan also fails the second test. Perhaps the best / most striking example of this is that in 'Winged Pharaoh' there is much talk about the family burial plot at Abydos, which was well known from Petrie's excavations in the early 1900s. Shortly after 'Winged Pharaoh' was finished, another British archaeologist, Walter Emery, started excavating some vast tombs of the same period far to the north at Sakkara. These were huge edifices, certainly on a par with those at Abydos, although they looked very different - while the Abydos tombs were holes in the ground surmounted by mounds, these were huge above ground rectangular mud brick edifices.

   Whether one was a burial (the Abydos tombs have best claim to this, as we know they once contained royal bodies) and the other a cenotaph, or whether one was the Royal tomb (Abydos) and the other a tomb of a hugely important functionary is still the subject of debate, but the point is that these were built at the same time and were vast. If Joan had Far Memory she would have known about these massive mastabas. They must have been a huge conversation point at Court, as well as entailing significant amounts of administration and work from a large proportion of the population.

This to me is the most devastating proof that Joan did not have Far Memory.

The third test is as I say an 'open test' but I cannot see how anything could possibly be found that was so important and material that it would explain away or set aside the difficulties I have raised in the first two tests.

Does this mean that Joan should be written off as a 'sham' and assigned to the scrap heap of history?

Certainly not.

Even if we now know that Joan did not have Far Memory, her belief system brought hope to hundreds of thousands of people who had been through the devastation of World War One, the flu pandemic that followed it, and one of the world's severest economic recessions, and who were about to face another War in which they would also be in need of comfort. And without that comfort (and Dennis Wheatley was far from the only senior figure in World War Two to have unconventional beliefs. George Patton was also a believer in reincarnation while many other senior figures in the War effort on both sides of the Atlantic were committed Christians) maybe the War would not have been waged quite so resolutely and without quite such a favourable (to the Allies) outcome.

Furthermore, both Joan and Dennis gave us as a direct result of Joan's beliefs some beautiful and very exciting books which can be enjoyed as novels as much today as they could be when they were first written.

Joan Grant and Dennis Wheatley are certainly among the most unusual people to have come out of Twentieth Century Britain, but that does not prevent them from being important, and they were both important as authors and opinion formers, and for that reason if no other they remain worthy of study.

But for a concluding test of a less academic nature, one might go back to the question posed by the 'Great Hunters', who at the end of 'Scarlet Feather' asked each member of Joan's tribe when they died :

"How many people are happier because you were born?"

Joan and Dennis's answers would be in far larger numbers than most of ours, I would wager.