This article is a presentation of a series of letters of Neville Goddard’s first mentor Arthur Lipscombe Begbie’s (1852–1935) published in Light, a London Spiritualist weekly between 1921 and 1929, showing his beliefs and presenting theories of healing based on electrical and magnetic force. The following traces his views chronologically, from his account of electrical healing in Mormon Utah to his final published letters questioning literal biblical interpretation.

You can view the previous article that outlines the discovery of his identity in The British Library Records That Solved the Mystery of Neville’s Mentor: The “Old Scotsman” is Arthur Lipscombe Begbie.

The British Library Records That Solved the Mystery of Neville’s Mentor: The “Old Scotsman” is Arthur Lipscombe Begbie

February 19, 1921

A short editorial note in Light thanking Begbie for an earlier submission, the first sign of him in Light magazine.

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.
A. L. BEGBIE.- Thank you. We can use a portion of it in an appropriate form.

April 1921

Two months later, a Light piece raises the question of “electrical” versus “magnetic” healers this is not written by Begbie, but the piece he replies to a month later.

ELECTRICAL PEOPLE AND MAGNETIC PEOPLE.

A well-known magnetic healer has expressed the view that the world can be broadly divided into persons who are electrical and persons who are magnetic, and that, in healing, it is found that the former need magnetic and the latter electrical treatment. The healer instanced his own case. He readily responded when ill to electrical treatment which he declared was of little use to the electrical type of patient.

Large generalisations of this kind are notoriously dangerous, the human temperament being very mixed, and pure types relatively rare, whether it is a question of Saxon and Celtic or Teuton and Latin temperaments. Moreover, the mental question comes into the matter conspicuously. There are magnetic minds which may not inhabit magnetic bodies—indeed the latter may be of the thin and meagre type which could be classed as “electrical.”

The question was put to a physician familiar with psychotherapeutics, and he expressed his inability to decide whether the healer’s proposition was correct.

Perhaps some reader of LIGHT who has studied the subject and arrived at conclusions on a basis of practical experience may be able to illuminate the question for us, and say how far the classification is correct. It would be certainly useful to know if it is true that “magnetic” patients are the most suitable types for electrical treatment, and vice versâ.

“Be noble! and the nobleness that lies
In other men, sleeping, but never dead,
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own.”
—LOWELL.

May 14, 1921

Begbie answers, drawing on his mining years in Mormon Utah, where he tried electrical treatment on a paralytic the “laying on of hands” had failed to cure.

Mr. A. L. Begbie writes:—

“The magnetic healer, who claims to be revitalised by electricity (p. 283) surely should know that he is a magnetic battery, and when depleted he can be revitalised on the same principle as any other battery.

“I have never seen nor heard of the definite limits in human beings of electric and magnetic forces.

“The Mormons in Utah to-day carry out the old Jewish principle of the ‘laying on of hands.’ To effect cures ten to twenty brothers and sisters are chosen for their positive or negative powers; these link up, and concentrate their minds on the curing of their brother’s ailment. The fact of these persons coming together to give ‘love-service’ calls into operation forces that are not sufficiently studied to-day by our physicians and metaphysicians. These Mormons undoubtedly cure a lot of ailments, and some in a most remarkable way. As an electric healer myself, when in Utah I could not help trying some powerful batteries on a paralytic case that the ‘laying on of hands’ had failed to cure. I was very successful—but both myself and the batteries were decreed to be the instruments of the evil one!

“Massage to be fully successful requires the principle of positive and negative forces to be correctly applied, the masseur being chosen as being the likely complement to the conditions of the patient—or the best results cannot be attained.”

Note: Begbie spent years as a mining engineer in the American West, including time in Mormon Utah. Nineteenth-century Latter-day Saint communities practiced healing through the “laying on of hands,” a ritual rooted in old Jewish and early Christian tradition, meant to channel divine power into a sick body. Begbie was an engineer and described the practice in electrical terms as a circuit at the time. He also draws on Mesmerism, the late-18th-century theory holding that a single invisible fluid connects all living things, and that illness results from a blockage or depletion of that fluid. By the 1880s and 1890s, electrical medicine using galvanic and faradic batteries for nerve damage and paralysis existed alongside this older idea, and the two vocabularies were often used.

June 11, 1921

Begbie’s fullest statement of his general philosophy that spiritual truth is a science.

SPIRITUAL SCIENCE.
By A. L. BEGBIE.

One meets some active minds, working in science, business and society, who profess to be open-minded and demand to have the truths of spiritual science explained to them (in about thirty minutes); then they will decide if our truths are correct.

They fail to understand that each individual must gain his own proof of the truth of man’s spiritual nature; and that it takes much study and time: for either man is a mere physical animal, whose life ends at death, or he is a spirit and his life continues after he has cast off his physical envelope: each individual must either study to know the purpose of his life or must rely on the opinion of some teacher and stake his future on this opinion being correct.

We now understand more of the immutable cosmic laws, as, for instance, those that rule chemistry, electricity, ether and spirit life; five hundred years ago these laws acted as immutably as they do now, but man was more ignorant, and had not harnessed these forces to make them work for him, as he now does with electricity, wireless telegraphy, etc. This surely is evidence that we should use our intelligence and every possible method, that will teach us a little more of the system of cosmic law that rules our life, so that we can act more in accord with that law and thus get the best out of our present life and improve the conditions of our future.

Much has been taught about the nature of the spirit when in its physical shell, and also of its conditions after death, the result being that there are many religions, subdivided up into various sects, all having a certain amount of truth in them, which satisfies those who believe in their teachings.

The chief purpose of spiritual science is to show that each individual can obtain satisfactory evidence that life continues after death, and that when an individual is thus convinced his actions will prove him a better citizen, willing and anxious to aid his fellow men to progress towards “at-one-ment” with light, justice and truth, in short, towards the Deity, Who is the source of his spiritual being.

February 25, 1922

A year later, Begbie traces his theory back to ancient Egypt, describing priest-healers who used magnets at the sickbed.

ANCIENT MAGNETIC HEALING.
By A. L. BEGBIE.

Spiritualists know that the physical body is occupied by a spirit, which is the “vital spark,” and that when this “spark” leaves the physical body the body is said to be “dead.” The ancient healers also taught that man’s spiritual nature was the vital force that ruled the physical body, as well as the “Ka” body, and that many human ailments were due to an insufficient supply of magnetic or nerve force, which affected certain organs, and prevented them from carrying on their natural functions, thus causing ill health. The obvious remedy was to supply magnetic force, yet most modern doctors claim that their science is limited to the physical treatment of the material body.

The Egyptians respected the powers of their priestly healers, and in order to increase their individual magnetic power the priests arranged a system of magnets in their “sick-beds,” where they treated such patients, and were apparently very successful in such treatment.

Considering the wonderful progress of modern electricity as applied to mechanics, it is very disappointing that more progress has not been made in using electric-magnetism as a therapeutic agent. Diagnosis in nervous diseases is often extremely difficult, and for this electricity is of especial value, as the patient is unable to deceive himself or his healer. There are many capable spirit healers who give very efficient aid in defining diagnosis and treatment (as I have often experienced). Most of these controls purport to be either old Egyptian priests or American Indian healers. The Egyptians rely on restoring vitality by certain methods of breathing, “will-force,” and passes in a downward direction, whilst the Indians prefer an energetic system of massage; but all agree that very much ill-health comes from lack of magnetic life force, which can be restored by inducing the patient to have confidence in the healer, so as to co-operate with him in restoring the healthy action of the afflicted part.

As old age creeps on, the physical body loses much of its vitality, but this may be maintained by proper diet, various exercises and magnetic treatment, until the body is absolutely worn out, when the spirit leaves its worn-out garment.

Note: Begbie’s description previousl, of the human being as a “magnetic battery,” with “no definite limits… of electric and magnetic forces,” rejects a fixed ceiling on human capacity. Neville’s teaching, in a way without the electrical vocabulary, keeps this same concept as consciousness being the one underlying reality, with perceived limits showing a failure to draw on what was already available.

December 18, 1926

By now Begbie had traded batteries for an engraver’s blade, advertising hand-carved mother-of-pearl symbols from his Hammersmith home.

ANCIENT SYMBOLS (when understood), act as visible Mediums, that induce their Owners to Act, according to man’s Ideals of Justice, etc.; made in Mother-of-pearl, etc.—A. Begbie, 36, Rowan Road, W.6.

Note: By 1926, engraved mother-of-pearl and shell talismans carried real currency in the London occult scene. The gemologist George Frederick Kunz had catalogued nacre’s traditional calming properties, and the writer William Pavitt, in The Book of Talismans, Amulets and Zodiacal Gems (1922), described a talisman as “a thought made concrete” an object meant to serve as a continual reminder of an ideal. Begbie’s advertisement reflects this same logic.

June 8, 1929

Still writing from Rowan Road, Begbie questions whether Genesis was ever meant to be read literally.

TRUTHS—ANCIENT AND MODERN.

Sir,—LIGHT describes the progress being made in our knowledge of spiritual truths, but is it within the scope of LIGHT to inquire into ancient truths? I refer to the question of how far St. Origen and St. Jerome taught the truth when they compiled the Bible, and accepted the old Jewish teaching of the Omniscient and Omnipotent Jehovah creating man, and then—because man disobeyed Him—cursing His creation. Can this be true? Personally I have only obtained contradictory replies from “the other side”, but some of your readers may have had more satisfactory results.—Yours, etc.,
A. L. BEGBIE.
36, Rowan Road, W.6.

Note: Begbie’s 1929 letter on Origen and Jerome doesn’t dispute the truth of the Bible but questions if the text was ever meant to be read literally. Neville’s later teaching made the same move at a larger scale, treating Scripture as psychological drama rather than history, with its characters representing states within a single consciousness.

December 14, 1929

Six months later Begbie writes his last known letter from Deerswood Farm, Crawley, Sussex, the same address on Matthew’s burial record.

THE HIGHER CONCEPTION OF DEITY.

Sir,—How can you or your many readers explain the mental stagnation of the majority of civilised men and women, who still accept as their God the Jewish tribal deity as he is depicted in the Jewish Bible?

Jehovah is evidently the conception of a crude and very ancient people, and so is at variance with what man has now grown to know about the immutable Divine Laws that rule, with such wonderful order and wisdom, the Universe and all life-conditions, and that attest the attributes of the beneficent Creator Father.

Yet few men dare to say they disbelieve the old Jewish faith about Jehovah and his curse on all men, as it is the foundation of orthodox Christianity.—Yours, etc.,
A. L. BEGBIE.
Deerswood Farm, Crawley, Sussex.

[The “Higher Critics” and the “Modernists” in the Church of England are giving this matter so much attention nowadays, that it seems unnecessary for LIGHT, which is not specially concerned with theological ideas, to take part in the discussion.—ED.]

Note: Light’s editor declined to engage with the theological question raised in Begbie’s letter. The letter though continued an argument Begbie had been making for eight years that institutional religion got the feeling part right but the mechanism wrong. Mormon healing circle, an Egyptian priest, or the God of Genesis, his position stayed the same beneath any specific ritual or doctrine lay one universal, orderly force.