Paschal Beverly Randolph

Paschal Beverly Randolph was an American medical doctor, occultist, Spiritualist, trance medium, and writer. Randolph is notable as perhaps the first person to introduce the principles of sex magic to North America, and, according to A.E. Waite, establishing the earliest known Rosicrucian order in the United States.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/140934558/paschal-beverly-randolph

"Randolph, Paschal Beverly ( 8 Oct. 1825 - 29 July 1875 ), physician, philosopher, and author, was born in New York City , the son of William Beverly Randolph, a plantation owner, and Flora Beverly, a barmaid. At the age of five or seven Randolph lost his mother to smallpox, and with her the only love he had known. Randolph later stated, "I was born in love, of a loving mother, and what she felt, that I lived." His father's devotion is questionable. In 1873 Randolph hinted at his own illegitimacy, stating that his parents "did not stop to pay fees to the justice or to the priest."

Randolph 's mother possessed a strong temperament, unusual physical beauty, and intense passions, characteristics that Randolph inherited. Later many, especially his enemies, perceived Randolph as being of "Negro descent," which he denied. Sent to live with his half-sister, Randolph was ignored, unloved, and abused and eventually turned to begging on the streets.

Uneducated, receiving only one year of formal education, Randolph attempted to train himself. At the age of fifteen he left home and spent the next five years as a sailor, traveling around the world. This period was a lonely and bitter one. Forced to leave the sea by an accident incurred while chopping wood, he learned the dyer's and barber's trade. During this interval (1845-1850), he also became interested in medicine and arcane science.

In 1850 Randolph married Mary Jane (maiden name unknown); they would have three children. That same year he befriended Colonel Ethan Allen Hitchcock, who had for some time been interested in alchemy and pantheistic philosophy. With Hitchcock's support, Randolph was admitted in 1850 to a meeting at Frankfort on the Main , Germany, of the Fraternitas Rosæ Crucis. The Fraternitas then, as in its foundation in 1616, was a brotherhood of esoteric enlightenment that brought together alchemists, magi, Hermetists, Phtonists, Paracelsians, and Gnostics in search of soul consciousness. ….

In the 1850s married Mary Jane,a Utica, NY publisher, with whom he had Jacob, Winnie and Cora Virginia. Only Cora survived childhood. His third wife was Katherine "Kate" Corson, whome he married in Box Elder County, Utah. Kate became a publisher in Toledo, by whom he had a son, Osiris Budh Randolph.

References

• Paschal Beverly in the New York, New York, U.S., Almshouse Ledgers, 1758-1952 < AncestrySharing > Name: Paschal Beverly Admission Age: 10 Discharge Age: 10 Record Type: Discharge Birth Date: abt 1826 Birth Place: New York Admission Date: 18 May 1836 Admission Place: New York, New York, USA Discharge Date: 8 Oct 1836
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paschal_Beverly_Randolph
• Deveney, John Patrick and Franklin Rosemont (1996). Paschal Beverly Randolph: A Nineteenth-Century Black American Spiritualist, Rosicrucian, and Sex Magician. State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-3120-7. Godwin, Jocelyn, Christian Chanel, and John Patrick Deveney (1995).
• The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor: Initiatic and Historical Documents of an Order of Practical Occultism. Samuel Weiser. ISBN 0-87728-825-9. Carl Edwin Lindgren, (1999). Randolph, Paschal Beverly. American National Biography (biographical entry).
• 1. "United States Passport Applications, 1795-1925," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QKNT-VC44 : 16 March 2018), Pascal Beverly Randolph, 07 Apr 1855; citing Passport Application, , source certificate #, Passport Applications, 1795-1905., 50, NARA microfilm publications M1490 and M1372 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).
• New York, New York City Marriage Records, 1829-1938", database, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:249V-HFW : 19 August 2022), William Beverly Randolph in entry for Paschal Randolph and Augusta Shore Thomson, 1872. Name Paschal B Randolph Sex Male Age 46 Birth Year (Estimated) 1826 Father's Name William B Father's Sex Male Mother's Name Flora Myers Mother's Sex Female Spouse's Name Augusta M A Thomson Spouse's Sex Female Spouse's Age 27 Spouse's Birth Year (Estimated) 1845 Spouse's Father's Name John Shore Spouse's Father's Sex Male Spouse's Mother's Name Ann Sullivan Marriage Date 18 Oct 1872 Marriage Place Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States Event Type Marriage Source Details 287