Occu 1 t Chemist y
The thrust of my thesis is simple: if Hodson's clairvoyant faculties could
enable him to "see" inside an electron, and ifAnnie Besant and Charles
Leadbeater could accurately describe the inner makeup of the known
chemical elements, then their descriptions of nature spirits would have
to be taken seriously. But first I had to be sure there really was an ac-
ceptable correspondence between the theosophists' description of ma-
terial atoms and the "reality" of orthodox physicists.
To find out I went in search of the first qualified theoretical physi-
cist to reevaluate the theosophists' pioneering work in Occult Chemistry,
Dr. Stephen M. Phillips, a professor of particle physics. Phillips's book
Extrasensory Perception of Quarks, published in 1980, while dealing with
the most advanced nuclear theories, including the nature of quarks,
postulated particles even smaller than quarks as yet undiscovered by sci-
ence. Analyzing twenty-two diagrams of the hundred or so chemical
atoms described in Occult Chemistry by his two co-nationals at the turn
of the century, Phillips found it hard to avoid the conclusion that
"Besant and Leadbeater did truly observe quarks using ESP some 70
years before physicists proposed their existence." What is more, their di-
agrams indicated "ultimate physical particles" even smaller than quarks.
By the time I discovered Phillips on the southern coast of England
in the seaside resort of Bournemouth, he had checked another eighty-
four of the theosophists' atoms: all were seen by him to be IOO percent
consonant with the most recent findings of particle physicists. Every
one of the 3,546 subquarks counted by Leadbeater in the element of
gold could be correctly accounted for by Phillips. Were Phillips's con-
clusions to be substantiated by his peers, it would adduce evidence that