Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie
Encyclopedia
Kenneth Robert Henderson Mackenzie (31 October 1833 – 3 July 1886) was an English linguist, orientalist and autodidact.
, England
. The following year, his family lived in Vienna
, where his father, Dr. Rowland Hill Mackenzie, was assistant surgeon in the midwifery department at Imperial Hospital. When Dr. Mackenzie and his wife returned to England around 1840, Kenneth remained in Vienna for his education, excelling in languages (German, French, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew). At 17, he was back in London, where he worked in the publishing office of Benjamin Disraeli.
, a translation of a text by Herodotus, appeared in Theodore Alois Buckley
’s The Odyssey of Homer, with the Hymns, Epigrams, and Battles of the Frogs and Mice. Literally Translated, with Explanatory Notes (London: Henry Bohn). At the beginning of the book, Buckley thanked Mackenzie for his Life of Homer: Attributed to Herodotus, writing, For the translation of the Pseudo-Herodotean Life of Homer, the reader is indebted to the industry of Kenneth Mackenzie, Esq. It is the earliest memoir of the supposed author of the Iliad we possess. ("Care and an excellent education seconding the happy talents with which nature had endowed him, [he] soon surpassed his school fellows in every attainment," Mackenzie wrote of the young Homer. "[W]hen older, he... taught in the school of Phemius, where every one applauded him.")
In 1852, the year of publication of his translation, from German, of Karl Richard Lepsius
’ Briefe aus Aegypten, Aethiopen (Discoveries in Egypt, Ethiopia and the Peninsula of Sinai), Mackenzie also translated, from Danish, Hans Christian Andersen
’s In Sweden (published in the book The Story of My Life; and In Sweden). For T. A. Buckley’s 1852 book Great Cities of the Ancient World, Mackenzie supplied the chapters on Peking, America, and Scandinavia. In Buckley's Great Cities of the Middle Ages (Routledge, 1853), the author thanked "my literary friend and coadjutor, Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie" for contributing the chapters on the cities of Spain. In Buckley's The Dawnings of Distinguished Men (Routledge, 1853), the author acknowledged "I am again a grateful debtor to the kindness of my friend Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie, Esq., whose Memoir of Thomas Chatterton
forms one of its most interesting chapters." ("As his taste differed from that of children of his age, his dispositions were also different," Mackenzie, 19, wrote of the dreamy 18th century romantic poet and document forger who had committed suicide in London at the age of 18. "Instead of the thoughtless levity of childhood he possessed the gravity, pensiveness, and melancholy of mature life.... some dark, doubtful ideas of the great Life had presented themselves, and his spirit was grappling with them in hard strife.")
In 1853, Routledge published Mackenzie’s book Burmah and the Burmese, even as Mackenzie was busy helping Walter Savage Landor
prepare a new edition of his Imaginary Conversations (Demosthenes
to Eubulides: "We want surprise, as at our theaters; astonishment, as at the mysteries of Eleusis
." Diogenes to Plato
: "It is better to shake our heads and let nothing out of them than to be plain and explicit in matters of difficulty... for if we answer with ease, we may be... liable to the probation of every clown's knuckle.")
In 1854, Mackenzie translated, from the German, Friedrich Wagner’s Schamyl and Circassia (the title page noting Mackenzie had already, at age 20, been appointed a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London
and a Member of the Royal Asiatic Society
of Great Britain). ("[T]he deeds of this remarkable man [ Imam Shamil
]... have filled his enemies as well as his friends with astonishment and admiration... Civilization such as we have around us now, leads inevitably to heartlessness.")
In 1855, Mackenzie translated, from the German, J. W. Wolf’s Fairy Tales Collected in the Odenwald (Routledge). Between October 1858 and January 1859, at his own expense, Mackenzie published four issues of The Biological Review: A Monthly Repertory of the Science of Life. In 1859, Routledge published Master Tyll Owlglass: His Marvellous Adventures and Rare Conceits, Mackenzie’s translation of the medieval prankster story "Till Eulenspiegel
", published in the U.S. in 1860 by Ticknor & Fields. ("[T]he era of its [original] publication was rife with magicians, astrologers, and alchymists... Cornelius Agrippa very shortly afterwards found it necessary to protest against the abuse of such subjects in his treatise 'Of the Uncertainty and Vanity of the Sciences and Arts'... Johannes Trithemius
was then Abbot of the Benedictine Monastery of Spanheim... but true to its mission of a folkbook, filled with the manners and customs of its time, [this story of ] Owlglass is thoroughly worldly and, for us, therefore, possesses greater interest and value.")
In 1861, Mackenzie traveled to Paris to meet the French occultist Eliphas Levi
(Alphonse Louis Constant). In 1854, Mackenzie had met the American Rosicrucian Paschal Beverly Randolph
who, in Paris in 1861, was newly appointed Supreme Grand Master for the Western World of the Fraternitas Rosae Crucis
. In 1864, when Robert Wentworth Little
found some old Rosicrucian rituals written in German in the storerooms of London’s Freemason’s Hall, he immediately turned to Mackenzie to help him whip these up into an esoteric order. Thinking that Mackenzie, a friend of the likes of Paschal Beverly Randolph and Eliphas Levi, had – as Mackenzie himself had claimed – been initiated into a German Rosicrucian fraternity when he lived in Vienna, Little believed Mackenzie had the “authority” to found the new, “authentic” esoteric society. In 1866, with Mackenzie’s help, Little founded the Rosicrucian Society of England, the Societas Rosicruciana
in Anglia. The main leaders of the new organization were Little, William Wynn Westcott
, William Robert Woodman
, and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers
(Westcott, Woodman, and Mathers would later be "the founding Chiefs" of the "Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
").
According to a report of The Gentleman's Magazine
, in May 1863, Mackenzie read to the Society of Antiquaries of London
an "interesting paper" on "the 'History of the Horn book' illustrated by specimens from his own collection and by photographs and woodcuts from other collections." At the time, Mackenzie was preparing for the publication of a book on the subject. The publisher, in advance of the publication, had set in type and printed the title page; only this page was ever printed. As for "the paper" read before the Society of Antiquaries, The Gentleman’s Magazine reported, it "shewed considerable research, and was listened to with much interest."
In 1870 in London, James Hogg & Son published Mackenzie’s translation of Johann Georg Ludwig Hesekiel
’s Life Of Bismarck (republished in the U.S. in 1877 as Bismarck: His Authentic Biography; Profusely Illustrated by Distinguished Artists, with a new introduction by Bayard Taylor
).
In 1872, the year of his marriage, seven pages of a manuscript, "Zythogala; or, Borne by the Sea: An International Romance of the Nineteenth Century By K. R. H. Mackenzie. London & Paris: Published by Authority of The Cosmological Society; Philadelphia: Mackenzie & Co. Chestnut Street; Leipsig: ‘Als Manuskript Gedruct’ Tauchnitz, 1872. Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1872 by Robert Shelton Mackenzie of Philadelphia," made their way into the formal holdings of the British Library
. The book was never published, but to this day the incomplete manuscript – just the first seven pages – remain on a shelf at the British Library (and nowhere else). ["One of the queerest mixtures to be used as a beverage to be found anywhere is zythogala, a mixture of milk and beer."]
Though known as something of an eccentric, "one of the most companionable of persons" when sober, but mean-spirited and harshly critical when under the influence of ale (in Vienna he had become very fond of both Vienna-style red ale and the beers of Munich, Germany), with no known source of income (apparently he had developed a system of astrological prediction of horse race winners that seemingly never produced any actual winnings), in 1872 Mackenzie married Alexandrina Aydon.
In 1873, Mackenzie’s friend and mentor Frederick Hockley wrote of him, "I have the utmost reluctance even to refer to Mr. Kenneth Mackenzie. I made his acquaintance about 15 or 16 years since. I found him then a very young man who having been educated in Germany possessed a thorough knowledge of German and French and his translations having been highly praised by the press, exceedingly desirous of investigating the Occult Sciences, and when sober one of the most companionable persons I ever met."
In October 1874, a publisher’s prospectus was issued for Mackenzie’s Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia. In mid-August 1875, Mackenzie wrote a friend that “when this book is finished, I shall, very likely, run over to Canada. My father in law Harrison Aydon is carrying all before him and I am in correspondence with my cousin Alexander Mackenzie
the Premier (sic) [of Canada]." Mackenzie corrected the last of the Cyclopaedia proofs early in 1877.
In 1881, Mackenzie edited the early issues of the Masonic periodical Kneph. He planned a book called The Game of Tarot
: Archaeologically and Symbolically Considered, which was announced but not published. Another new order, the "Order of Light", was launched in 1882, followed by Mackenzie’s creation of an even more esoteric Masonic organization called the "Society of Eight," formed especially "for the study of Alchemy
." In 1883, John Hogg published The Shoes of Fortune, and Other Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen, "with a biographical sketch of Andersen by Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie, LLD., original English editor of Andersen's 'In Sweden'."
In August 1887, the Cipher Manuscripts
were bought from Mackenzie’s wife and transferred, via A. F. A. Woodford, to William Wynn Westcott. Though Mackenzie had himself created the Cipher Manuscripts, Westcott made elaborate claims concerning Mackenzie’s having received permission to open, in Britain, an order that was said to have originated in Germany, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
. The Cipher Manuscripts were used to found the order.
Early life
Mackenzie was born on 31 October 1833 at Deptford near LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. The following year, his family lived in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, where his father, Dr. Rowland Hill Mackenzie, was assistant surgeon in the midwifery department at Imperial Hospital. When Dr. Mackenzie and his wife returned to England around 1840, Kenneth remained in Vienna for his education, excelling in languages (German, French, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew). At 17, he was back in London, where he worked in the publishing office of Benjamin Disraeli.
Literary career
In 1851, when Mackenzie was just 18, his short introductory biography of HomerHomer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
, a translation of a text by Herodotus, appeared in Theodore Alois Buckley
Theodore Alois Buckley
Theodore Alois William Buckley was a translator of Homer's and other classical works. In 1873 he published a literal prose translation of the complete text of The Iliad, in which he included explanatory notes....
’s The Odyssey of Homer, with the Hymns, Epigrams, and Battles of the Frogs and Mice. Literally Translated, with Explanatory Notes (London: Henry Bohn). At the beginning of the book, Buckley thanked Mackenzie for his Life of Homer: Attributed to Herodotus, writing, For the translation of the Pseudo-Herodotean Life of Homer, the reader is indebted to the industry of Kenneth Mackenzie, Esq. It is the earliest memoir of the supposed author of the Iliad we possess. ("Care and an excellent education seconding the happy talents with which nature had endowed him, [he] soon surpassed his school fellows in every attainment," Mackenzie wrote of the young Homer. "[W]hen older, he... taught in the school of Phemius, where every one applauded him.")
In 1852, the year of publication of his translation, from German, of Karl Richard Lepsius
Karl Richard Lepsius
Karl Richard Lepsius was a pioneering Prussian Egyptologist and linguist and pioneer of modern archaeology.-Background:...
’ Briefe aus Aegypten, Aethiopen (Discoveries in Egypt, Ethiopia and the Peninsula of Sinai), Mackenzie also translated, from Danish, Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet noted for his children's stories. These include "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," "The Snow Queen," "The Little Mermaid," "Thumbelina," "The Little Match Girl," and "The Ugly Duckling."...
’s In Sweden (published in the book The Story of My Life; and In Sweden). For T. A. Buckley’s 1852 book Great Cities of the Ancient World, Mackenzie supplied the chapters on Peking, America, and Scandinavia. In Buckley's Great Cities of the Middle Ages (Routledge, 1853), the author thanked "my literary friend and coadjutor, Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie" for contributing the chapters on the cities of Spain. In Buckley's The Dawnings of Distinguished Men (Routledge, 1853), the author acknowledged "I am again a grateful debtor to the kindness of my friend Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie, Esq., whose Memoir of Thomas Chatterton
Thomas Chatterton
Thomas Chatterton was an English poet and forger of pseudo-medieval poetry. He died of arsenic poisoning, either from a suicide attempt or self-medication for a venereal disease.-Childhood:...
forms one of its most interesting chapters." ("As his taste differed from that of children of his age, his dispositions were also different," Mackenzie, 19, wrote of the dreamy 18th century romantic poet and document forger who had committed suicide in London at the age of 18. "Instead of the thoughtless levity of childhood he possessed the gravity, pensiveness, and melancholy of mature life.... some dark, doubtful ideas of the great Life had presented themselves, and his spirit was grappling with them in hard strife.")
In 1853, Routledge published Mackenzie’s book Burmah and the Burmese, even as Mackenzie was busy helping Walter Savage Landor
Walter Savage Landor
Walter Savage Landor was an English writer and poet. His best known works were the prose Imaginary Conversations, and the poem Rose Aylmer, but the critical acclaim he received from contemporary poets and reviewers was not matched by public popularity...
prepare a new edition of his Imaginary Conversations (Demosthenes
Demosthenes
Demosthenes was a prominent Greek statesman and orator of ancient Athens. His orations constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prowess and provide an insight into the politics and culture of ancient Greece during the 4th century BC. Demosthenes learned rhetoric by...
to Eubulides: "We want surprise, as at our theaters; astonishment, as at the mysteries of Eleusis
Eleusinian Mysteries
The Eleusinian Mysteries were initiation ceremonies held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at Eleusis in ancient Greece. Of all the mysteries celebrated in ancient times, these were held to be the ones of greatest importance...
." Diogenes to Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
: "It is better to shake our heads and let nothing out of them than to be plain and explicit in matters of difficulty... for if we answer with ease, we may be... liable to the probation of every clown's knuckle.")
In 1854, Mackenzie translated, from the German, Friedrich Wagner’s Schamyl and Circassia (the title page noting Mackenzie had already, at age 20, been appointed a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London
Society of Antiquaries of London
The Society of Antiquaries of London is a learned society "charged by its Royal Charter of 1751 with 'the encouragement, advancement and furtherance of the study and knowledge of the antiquities and history of this and other countries'." It is based at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London , and is...
and a Member of the Royal Asiatic Society
Royal Asiatic Society
The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland was established, according to its Royal Charter of 11 August 1824, to further "the investigation of subjects connected with and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts in relation to Asia." From its incorporation the Society...
of Great Britain). ("[T]he deeds of this remarkable man [ Imam Shamil
Imam Shamil
Imam Shamil also spelled Shamyl, Schamil, Schamyl or Shameel was an Avar political and religious leader of the Muslim tribes of the Northern Caucasus...
]... have filled his enemies as well as his friends with astonishment and admiration... Civilization such as we have around us now, leads inevitably to heartlessness.")
In 1855, Mackenzie translated, from the German, J. W. Wolf’s Fairy Tales Collected in the Odenwald (Routledge). Between October 1858 and January 1859, at his own expense, Mackenzie published four issues of The Biological Review: A Monthly Repertory of the Science of Life. In 1859, Routledge published Master Tyll Owlglass: His Marvellous Adventures and Rare Conceits, Mackenzie’s translation of the medieval prankster story "Till Eulenspiegel
Till Eulenspiegel
Till Eulenspiegel was an impudent trickster figure originating in Middle Low German folklore. His tales were disseminated in popular printed editions narrating a string of lightly connected episodes that outlined his picaresque career, primarily in Germany, the Low Countries and France...
", published in the U.S. in 1860 by Ticknor & Fields. ("[T]he era of its [original] publication was rife with magicians, astrologers, and alchymists... Cornelius Agrippa very shortly afterwards found it necessary to protest against the abuse of such subjects in his treatise 'Of the Uncertainty and Vanity of the Sciences and Arts'... Johannes Trithemius
Johannes Trithemius
Johannes Trithemius , born Johann Heidenberg, was a German abbot, lexicographer, historian, cryptographer, polymath and occultist who had an influence on later occultism. The name by which he is more commonly known is derived from his native town of Trittenheim on the Mosel in Germany.-Life:He...
was then Abbot of the Benedictine Monastery of Spanheim... but true to its mission of a folkbook, filled with the manners and customs of its time, [this story of ] Owlglass is thoroughly worldly and, for us, therefore, possesses greater interest and value.")
In 1861, Mackenzie traveled to Paris to meet the French occultist Eliphas Levi
Eliphas Levi
Eliphas Lévi, born Alphonse Louis Constant , was a French occult author and purported magician."Eliphas Lévi," the name under which he published his books, was his attempt to translate or transliterate his given names "Alphonse Louis" into Hebrew although he was not Jewish.His second wife was...
(Alphonse Louis Constant). In 1854, Mackenzie had met the American Rosicrucian Paschal Beverly Randolph
Paschal Beverly Randolph
Randolph also edited the Leader and the Messenger of Light between 1852 to 1861 and wrote for the Journal of Progress and Spiritual Telegraph .2 as anonymous.3 under the pseudonym "Count de St. Leon".- References :...
who, in Paris in 1861, was newly appointed Supreme Grand Master for the Western World of the Fraternitas Rosae Crucis
Fraternitas Rosae Crucis
Fraternitas Rosae Crucis is a Rosicrucian fraternal organization founded by Paschal Beverly Randolph in 1858, and is the oldest Rosicrucian Order in the US...
. In 1864, when Robert Wentworth Little
Robert Wentworth Little
Robert Wentworth Little was a clerk and cashier of the secretary’s office at the United Grand Lodge of England and later secretary of the Royal Institution for Girls. He is credited with the structural design of the S.R.I.A. with the rituals acquired from the store room of Freemasons Hall...
found some old Rosicrucian rituals written in German in the storerooms of London’s Freemason’s Hall, he immediately turned to Mackenzie to help him whip these up into an esoteric order. Thinking that Mackenzie, a friend of the likes of Paschal Beverly Randolph and Eliphas Levi, had – as Mackenzie himself had claimed – been initiated into a German Rosicrucian fraternity when he lived in Vienna, Little believed Mackenzie had the “authority” to found the new, “authentic” esoteric society. In 1866, with Mackenzie’s help, Little founded the Rosicrucian Society of England, the Societas Rosicruciana
Societas Rosicruciana
The Societas Rosicruciana is a Rosicrucian order which limits its membership to Christian Master Masons. The order was founded in Scotland, but now exists in England, Scotland, Canada, France, Portugal, Romania, Ireland and the United States...
in Anglia. The main leaders of the new organization were Little, William Wynn Westcott
William Wynn Westcott
William Wynn Westcott was a coroner, ceremonial magician, and Freemason born in Leamington, Warwickshire, England...
, William Robert Woodman
William Robert Woodman
Dr. William Robert Woodman , one of three co-founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.-Early years:Woodman was born in England in 1828. He studied medicine and was licensed in...
, and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers
Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers
Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers , born Samuel Liddell Mathers, was one of the most influential figures in modern Occultism...
(Westcott, Woodman, and Mathers would later be "the founding Chiefs" of the "Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was a magical order active in Great Britain during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which practiced theurgy and spiritual development...
").
According to a report of The Gentleman's Magazine
The Gentleman's Magazine
The Gentleman's Magazine was founded in London, England, by Edward Cave in January 1731. It ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. It was the first to use the term "magazine" for a periodical...
, in May 1863, Mackenzie read to the Society of Antiquaries of London
Society of Antiquaries of London
The Society of Antiquaries of London is a learned society "charged by its Royal Charter of 1751 with 'the encouragement, advancement and furtherance of the study and knowledge of the antiquities and history of this and other countries'." It is based at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London , and is...
an "interesting paper" on "the 'History of the Horn book' illustrated by specimens from his own collection and by photographs and woodcuts from other collections." At the time, Mackenzie was preparing for the publication of a book on the subject. The publisher, in advance of the publication, had set in type and printed the title page; only this page was ever printed. As for "the paper" read before the Society of Antiquaries, The Gentleman’s Magazine reported, it "shewed considerable research, and was listened to with much interest."
In 1870 in London, James Hogg & Son published Mackenzie’s translation of Johann Georg Ludwig Hesekiel
Johann Georg Ludwig Hesekiel
Johann George Ludwig Hesekiel was a German author from Halle, where his father, distinguished as a writer of sacred poetry, was a Lutheran pastor....
’s Life Of Bismarck (republished in the U.S. in 1877 as Bismarck: His Authentic Biography; Profusely Illustrated by Distinguished Artists, with a new introduction by Bayard Taylor
Bayard Taylor
Bayard Taylor was an American poet, literary critic, translator, and travel author.-Life and work:...
).
In 1872, the year of his marriage, seven pages of a manuscript, "Zythogala; or, Borne by the Sea: An International Romance of the Nineteenth Century By K. R. H. Mackenzie. London & Paris: Published by Authority of The Cosmological Society; Philadelphia: Mackenzie & Co. Chestnut Street; Leipsig: ‘Als Manuskript Gedruct’ Tauchnitz, 1872. Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1872 by Robert Shelton Mackenzie of Philadelphia," made their way into the formal holdings of the British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
. The book was never published, but to this day the incomplete manuscript – just the first seven pages – remain on a shelf at the British Library (and nowhere else). ["One of the queerest mixtures to be used as a beverage to be found anywhere is zythogala, a mixture of milk and beer."]
Though known as something of an eccentric, "one of the most companionable of persons" when sober, but mean-spirited and harshly critical when under the influence of ale (in Vienna he had become very fond of both Vienna-style red ale and the beers of Munich, Germany), with no known source of income (apparently he had developed a system of astrological prediction of horse race winners that seemingly never produced any actual winnings), in 1872 Mackenzie married Alexandrina Aydon.
In 1873, Mackenzie’s friend and mentor Frederick Hockley wrote of him, "I have the utmost reluctance even to refer to Mr. Kenneth Mackenzie. I made his acquaintance about 15 or 16 years since. I found him then a very young man who having been educated in Germany possessed a thorough knowledge of German and French and his translations having been highly praised by the press, exceedingly desirous of investigating the Occult Sciences, and when sober one of the most companionable persons I ever met."
In October 1874, a publisher’s prospectus was issued for Mackenzie’s Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia. In mid-August 1875, Mackenzie wrote a friend that “when this book is finished, I shall, very likely, run over to Canada. My father in law Harrison Aydon is carrying all before him and I am in correspondence with my cousin Alexander Mackenzie
Alexander Mackenzie
Alexander Mackenzie, PC , a building contractor and newspaper editor, was the second Prime Minister of Canada from November 7, 1873 to October 8, 1878.-Biography:...
the Premier (sic) [of Canada]." Mackenzie corrected the last of the Cyclopaedia proofs early in 1877.
In 1881, Mackenzie edited the early issues of the Masonic periodical Kneph. He planned a book called The Game of Tarot
Tarot
The tarot |trionfi]] and later as tarocchi, tarock, and others) is a pack of cards , used from the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play a group of card games such as Italian tarocchini and French tarot...
: Archaeologically and Symbolically Considered, which was announced but not published. Another new order, the "Order of Light", was launched in 1882, followed by Mackenzie’s creation of an even more esoteric Masonic organization called the "Society of Eight," formed especially "for the study of Alchemy
Alchemy
Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose early practitioners’ claims to profound powers were known from antiquity. The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher's stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base...
." In 1883, John Hogg published The Shoes of Fortune, and Other Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen, "with a biographical sketch of Andersen by Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie, LLD., original English editor of Andersen's 'In Sweden'."
Death and posthumously discovered works
Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie died on 3 July 1886, shortly before his fifty-third birthday.In August 1887, the Cipher Manuscripts
Cipher Manuscripts
The Cipher Manuscripts are a collection of 60 folios containing the structural outline of a series of magical initiation rituals corresponding to the spiritual elements of Earth, Air, Water and Fire...
were bought from Mackenzie’s wife and transferred, via A. F. A. Woodford, to William Wynn Westcott. Though Mackenzie had himself created the Cipher Manuscripts, Westcott made elaborate claims concerning Mackenzie’s having received permission to open, in Britain, an order that was said to have originated in Germany, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was a magical order active in Great Britain during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which practiced theurgy and spiritual development...
. The Cipher Manuscripts were used to found the order.
External links
- http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Marvelous-Adventures-and-Rare-Conceits-of-Master-Tyll-Owlglass/Kenneth-R-H-MacKenzie/e/9780548316405 The Marvelous Adventures and Rare Conceits of Master Tyll Owlglass