[Way of Power: Studies in the Occult (1927)] (By: L. Adam Beck) [published: February, 1998]

by L. Adams Beck

"The Occult of Today Is the Science of Tomorrow." I have chosen this motto for my book relating to the occult, for it is an attempt to describe the (at first) very small experiences and knowledge which led me to see the reality of the true occult world lying like an almost uncharted country behind the thick jungle of fraud and charlatanry, and which have led me also to state in comparative detail what I found on my journey and the conclusions it compelled. I use the illustration of "going through the Looking Glass" for two excellent reasons. Firstly, everyone knows that remarkable story of Alice, dear to two or three generations, and how she passed through the Looking Glass to the queer upside-down sort of country behind it. Secondly, few people realize that the book is a wonderful parable of how you can get through the mere reflections of things into the reality behind them if only you know the way. Carroll, who was a great mathematician, knew of the undiscovered country from that point of view. I found a very different road and as a matter of fact there are almost as many roads as there are people. The country behind the Looking Glass, generally called the Occult world, is reality, and the daily world we live in is Shadow-land though the reflections look so hard and bright and real that they take most of us in.

Paperback

First published November 30, 1927

About the author

Pseudonym of Elizabeth Louisa Moresby.

Elizabeth Louisa "Lily" Moresby was born on late 1862 in Queenstown, Cork, Ireland, UK, the second child of Irish Jane Willis (Scott) and English John Moresby, a Royal Navy Captain who explored the coast of New Guinea and was the first European to discover the site of Port Moresby. She was grand-daughter of Eliza Louisa and Fairfax Moresby. She had a eldest brother Walter Halliday, and four youngest sisters Ethel Fortescue, Georgina, Hilda Fairfax and Gladys Moresby. Due to he father's work and her marriage to a Royal Navy commander Edward Western Hodgkinson, she lived and traveled widely in the East, in Egypt, India, China, Tibet, and Japan. Asian culture would greatly influence her and became a staunch Buddhist. She collabored in the writing of her father's book. Two Admirals: Sir John Moresby and John Moresby (1909).

After widowing around 1910, she remarried in 1912 to retired solicitor Ralph Coker Adams Beck. In 1919, the marriage visit Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, where she settled alone eventually. Surrounded by her Oriental art and Oriental servants, she entertained fortnightly at her home on Mountjoy Avenue in Oak Bay as a strict vegetarian with ascetic inclinations.

She began her writing career publishing short-stories for Newspapers and Magazzines. She was 60 years old by the time she started to publishing her first books. She used various pen names such as L. Adams Beck for books in oriental setting or about esoteric themes, E. Barrington for novelized biographies of British historical figures, and Louis Moresby for novles set in exotic locales.

She returned to Asia, and continued to write until her death on 3 January 1931 in Miyako Hotel, Kyoto, Japan.

Reviews

[Mysticalgoddess · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book at an bookstore that carries used and rare books. This book jumped out on me and so far so good. I may have to go back and re read some of it, but it's mostly studies n the occult. I found the author was way ahead of her time her. She talks about a vegetarian diet, seeing the other dimensions through dreams, meditation, enlightenment, and hypnotism. She studies the occult by traveling to India and China, where at the time, they had the key to all things that have to do with enlightenment. I am glad I found this book.

[Rufus O. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is life

Only for sincere seekers of the Divine, the true God. It is surprising how little the best of man knows.