Theosophy Cardiff:- "The Bowmen" and the Angel at Mons by Elizabeth Severs

THEOSOPHY

CARDIFF

Articles By Elizabeth Severs

Organising Secretary of the

Theosophical Order of Service in England 1909 - 1912

Cardiff Theosophical Society

206 Newport Road,

Cardiff, Wales, UK, CF24 – 1DL.

"The Bowmen" and

the Angels at Mons

Elizabeth Severs

From the Vahan 1915

DOES TELEPATHY EXPLAIN?

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In his introduction to The Bowmen Mr. Arthur Machen claims that all the stories of super-physical appearances said to be seen by our soldiers during the retreat from Mons, are variants of his short story The Bowmen, first published in The Evening News on September 29th, 1914.

Personally I have never been able to credit this theory that all these stories from the Front have their genesis in the fiction of a London journalist which he offers no evidence to prove ever reached France.

These stories came from the Front, a point Mr. Machen seems to have overlooked, though Mr. Machen's story may have familiarised people in England with the idea.

But the French also claim that Joan of Arc fights for France, and as the French soldier as a rule is totally ignorant of English, Mr. Machen's fiction cannot have influenced the French Army. The story of the White Comrade, as the soldiers have named a being, seen on the battlefields ministering to the wounded and dying (a local clergyman who was home on a few days' leave from his chaplaincy at the Front preached a sermon on the Ministry of the White Comrade) is also not covered by Mr. Machen's imaginary story. I myself am inclined to credit telepathy with a solution of the similarity of Mr. Machen's fiction and what I believe to be the actual experiences of some soldiers.

The other short stories in the collection of four short stories that comprise The Bowmen in book form show that Mr. Machen's writing is of a mystical character, so probably the author himself has a mystical element in his composition.

Now the mystical writer is generally a sensitive, a receptive person. He tells us he had been much stirred by an account of the heroic retreat from Mons, and that while in Church-apparently at a Roman Catholic service-his thoughts were busy with the subject projecting the story in The Bowmen called "The Soldiers' Rest." Strong emotion spreads far and is apt, according to the Theosophical theory of the influence of thought, and the projection of thought forms, to be reproduced by those in sympathy with the original thought. It is quite possible, or so it seems to me, that excited by the subject, his thoughts treating it mystically, some wave of sympathy reached Mr. Machen's consciousness from those of our sorely tried soldiers who in their great need believed they were helped by superphysical beings. Thoughts' are things and the emotion felt by the soldiers may have reached Mr. Machen's consciousness with the result that what he took to be an imaginary story, the creation of his own imagination, was founded on reality and" he built more truly than he knew."

Though the chief interest of The Bowmen rests on that story and the introduction, the other short stories are beautiful,-the author considers" The Soldiers' Rest" superior to The Bowmen in literary craft, and of a consoling character, putting forth in symbols some of the truths of religion touching man's immortality.