A study in Theosophy

“The Coming of the Fairies” by famous British writer Arthur Conan Doyle (which should be procured in an illustrated edition) is a book originally published in 1922. It´s one of the strangest books ever written, certainly the strangest from the pen of Doyle, otherwise best known as the creator of Sherlock Holmes.

Doyle was a Spiritualist and was on good terms with the Theosophical Society, leading British Theosophist Edward Gardner in particular. It was through Gardner that Doyle became embroiled in the curious affair of the “Cottingley Fairies”. In 1917, two girls named Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths from Cottingley in Yorkshire took two sensational photos with their father´s camera. One shows a gnome, the other a number of dancing fairies. The photos came to the attention of Doyle in 1920. The girls took three other photos of the fairies later the same year, with a camera borrowed from Gardner. All photos are included in “The Coming of the Fairies”, which also includes Doyle´s original article about the affair in Strand magazine.

Both Doyle and Gardner strongly believed in the authenticity of the photos, Doyle in particular thinking he had made a world-historic discovery of some sort. Supposed experts had told Doyle that neither photos nor negatives showed any evidence of tampering (this was true – the “fairies” were probably real cardboard figures!), but also that the fairies showed evidence of motion (probably not true). Some skeptic arguments were easily dispensed with – for instance, the surroundings at Cottingley really did look like in the photos, one of Elsie´s hands really was very large, etc. Thus, this was not evidence for tampering. Other skeptic objections should have been stronger, such as the “Parisian coiffure” of the dancing fairies. 

Why on earth would Yorkshire fairies look like stereotyped French dancers from the early 20^th century? Why did the fairies only show themselves on sunny days, and only to Frances and Elsie? Also, Elsie could paint and worked in a Christmas card factory! It wasn´t until 1983 that the two cousins finally admitted that the photos were faked. Today, it´s difficult to understand how Doyle could have been taken in so easily. The photos really are “too good to be true” (or even “too bad to be true”), but perhaps that´s why Doyle fell for it? (Addendum: A commentator pointed out in the thread below that according to some sources, Frances always insisted that the fifth photo was genuine.) 

What really surprised me when reading Doyle´s little volume was how seriously he treats the Theosophical view of the fairy. The book includes lengthy digressions written by Gardner or C W Leadbeater, one of the top leaders of the Theosophists whom Doyle had met while visiting Australia (where the British Leadbeater was “bishop” of the small “Liberal Catholic Church”). Gardner claims that the fairy are on the same evolutionary line as the butterflies and the moths, and that they “create” flowery plants and make them alive – a very original version of the argument from intelligent design! Leadbeater by contrast claims that the fairies have evolved from grasses and cereals through ants and bees?! Doyle and Gardner had also let a Theosophical clairvoyant, Geoffrey Hodson (not named in the book), visit Cottingley and write a report on whatever he saw there – and he saw plenty. Apparently, the area around the house where Frances and Elsie were staying was teeming with fairies, gnomes, sylphs, water-spirits and what not, all invisible to the naked eye. Hodson would later write a book all his own, reviewed by me elsewhere on this blog.

What makes the whole story even stranger is that fairies *don´t* look like Parisian dancers or humanoid butterflies according to traditional fairy lore from the British Isles, dutifully collected by another Theosophist, Walter Evans-Wentz, in his classic “The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries”.

It´s almost as if some kind of trickster archetype may be at work here…