Elbert Parker Benjamine

Background

Ethnicity: The Williams family, in the paternal line, is of Welsh origin. Elbert Benjamine's great-great-grandfather Jeremiah Williams came from Wales. The father of Elbert Benjamine's great-grandmother Elizabeth McCormick was Irish.

Elbert Benjamine was born Benjamin Parker Williams on December 12, 1882, near Adel in Iowa. He began to study the occult as a teenager and in 1900 made contact with the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, a small occult order headquartered in Denver, Colorado. He changed his name because his beliefs and ideas were unlike the view of his parents.

Education

Elbert Benjamine, receiving his formal education at Iowa State University, specialized to become a naturalist. But the powers that be had other plans, and his great work turned out to be the writing of the books for The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor and The Brotherhood of Light Lessons.

Elbert Benjamine studied with the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor under astrologer Minnie Higgins from 1900.

Career

In 1900 Benjamine Elbert joined The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor which was the outward expression of the “ancient Egyptian” Brotherhood of Light, a mystical order of enlightened beings believed by occultists to guide the destiny of humankind. The Brotherhood of Light was believed to have been founded in ancient Egypt and to have continued to the present under the leadership of a group of teachers not presently incarnated on the physical plane. The group is popularly known by many as the Great White Brotherhood. The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor circulated a series of lessons written by one of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor’s founder, Thomas H. Burgoyne.

In 1907 Benjamine directly contacted what he believed to be the Brotherhood of Light in response to his prayer for direction in his life. The founders of the brotherhood assured him to undertake the task of rewriting the Order’s teaching. Two years later he was called to Denver to become the Hermetic Brotherhood's astrologer, taking over the position formerly held by Minnie Higgins, who had recently died. He declined, but the next year, in 1910 he accepted an assignment to prepare a series of lessons on the 21 branches of occult science. After four years of intense study, in 1914 he felt ready to write. His work would take some 20 years to complete.

Meanwhile, the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor was closed in 1914, and Benjamine was left as an independent representative of the Brotherhood of Light. In 1915 he moved to Los Angeles and began holding his own classes. Only a small group gathered during the war years, but in 1918 he opened the Brotherhood of Light to the public and began his first public class on Armistice Day. As many lessons were completed, they were mimeographed and used as class texts. Benjamine published them under the pseudonym C. C. Zain, the name he used for all official brotherhood writings.

To get a first-working-draft of each course of lessons Elbert had to write one book per year. In 1916 he wrote Course 2, Laws of Astrological Signatures - published in 1922 in mimeograph form. In 1916-17 he wrote Course 4, Ancient Masonry - published in 1917. In 1918-19 he wrote Course 6, Kabbalism (The Sacred Tarot) - published 1922. In 1919 he wrote Course 1, Laws of Mediumship and Spiritism (Laws of Occultism) - published in 1919. In 1919 he wrote Course 5, Esoteric Psychology - published in 1922. In 1919 he wrote Spiritual Alchemy - published in 1922. And in 1919-20 he wrote Religion of the Stars (Spiritual Astrology) - published in 1922. All the time he continued to teach astrology classes and Brotherhood of Light (B of L) psychic development classes.

In 1920 he published the first Brotherhood of Light Annual and it was posted to all Brotherhood of Light members for free.

Then in March 1934 Benjamine completed writing the initial, first draft, of the Brotherhood of Light lessons. That year all the courses were published in mimeograph form with 8 courses published in cloth-bound books. But there was no time to sit back and relax. New evidence-based astrological and other information was being discovered and each new discovery had to be incorporated into the lessons.

In the 1920s Benjamine also emerged as a specialist in astrology, the area of occult science he enjoyed the most, and he became an important force in rebuilding astrology in the modern world. In the 1940s, having completed his writing task for the brotherhood, he issued a number of important astrological texts, including How to Use the Modern Ephemerides (1940), Stellar Dietetics (1942), The Beginner's Horoscope Maker (1940), and Astrological Lore of All Ages (1945).

In 1932 Benjamine established the Church of Light as a new esoteric expression of the Brotherhood of Light. He led the church until his death on November 18, 1951, by which time membership had spread across the United States and into Canada, England, Mexico, Nigeria, and Liberia.

Achievements

• Over 40 years Benjamine Elbert established a huge range of course of materials from astrology to alchemy and tarot to weather prediction (1909-1950).
  
  Benjamine wrote a complete set of lessons on 21 branches on occult science (1914-1934).
  
  Meanwhile, he created over 210 lesson courses in astrology and other esoteric subjects.
  
  Benjamine Elbert was also instrumental in establishing a Bird Sanctuary in Los Angeles, California.

Works

More photos

• article

  • The Brotherhood of Light Annual

    (Pamphlets from occultist organization include: article on...)

    1928
  • Brotherhood of Light Astrological Quarterly Reports

    (Brotherhood of Light Astrological Quarterly Reports. A Mi...)

    1932

• book

  • When And What Events Will Happen

    (When And What Events Will Happen: With Statistical Analys...)

    1942
  • How to Select a Vocation

    (How to Select a Vocation with Statistical Analysis of 3,0...)

    1942
  • Brotherhood of Light Lessons

    (This book is a compilation of the authentic Brotherhood o...)

    1934
  • Progressed Aspects of Standard Astrology: The Easy Way to Calculate and Judge

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

    1942
  • The Laws of Mediumship 1924
  • How to Use Modern Ephemerides: Computed for Midnight, Noon, Greenwich and Other Places 1940
  • Stellar Dietetics the Astrological Road Map to Diet and Health 1942
  • The Beginner's Horoscope Maker 1943
  • The Beginner's Horoscope Reader 1943
  • The Influence of the Planet Pluto: Including Ephemeris of Pluto 1939
  • The Hermetic System of Progressions 1934
  • Astrological Lore of All Ages 1945
  • Turning the Dial to Inner Planes 1942
  • Physiology and Correspondence 1916
  • Character Reading, Instantaneous Reading From Profile 1940
  • Chart Your Future 1949

Views

Benjamine Elbert was an adherent of Occultism, so-called Religion of The Stars.

He commenced constructing an entirely new understanding of astrology. He established a new astrological model that began with interaction. He viewed the birth chart, the soul, and the environment as a developmental system. He recognized a dynamic interaction between the chart, the evolving soul-intelligence, and the environmental setting that provides experience.

He explained that your not-conscious mind or soul is an organized system of thoughts, feelings and character traits; that your birth chart is a map of your soul’s thought-structure; that each planet in the chart represents a dynamic urge or driver within your not-conscious psychological landscape; that the zodiac signs represent attitudes and motivations that give these psychological urges distinct modes of expression; that the angular relationships formed by the planets identify unconscious thought-complexes that have constructive or destructive modes of functionality; and the houses represent your local environment – the life-matters and people that influence what happens and what you do.

Elbert introduced keywords into the science of astrology. The keywords for the planets and zodiac signs are precise descriptions of their expression as human nature. And the keywords for the angular relationships formed by the planets are precise descriptions of their influence in life.

Membership

• 

  The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor

  1900 - 1914

• 

  The Brotherhood of Light

  1915 - 1932

• 

  Church of Light

  1932 - 1951

• Benjamine Elbert was a President of the Southern California Nature Club.

  Southern California Nature Club

Personality

Elbert Benjamine was a nature student all of his life and for 25 years he served as a President of the Southern California Nature Club, organizing and conducting field trips for the group.

Quotes from others about the person

• "Most of this life he occupied the lecture platform, and the last two years found him taking evangelistic tours about the country. It was through these trips that so many students of astrology and occultism came to know and love him." - Doris Chase Doane
  
  "There is probably no trail in the mountains of the Western United States that does not bear the imprint of this great Sagittarian." - Doris Chase Doane

Interests

• Hiking

Connections

In 1919 Elbert married Elizabeth Dorris and this marriage was very fortunate in more ways than one. Elizabeth owned her own home so he no longer had to pay rent and he now had a working partner to assist him in re-establishing The Religion of the Stars.

Father:

William Johnston Williams

Mother:

Emma Greene

Wife:

Elizabeth Benjamine (Dorris)

Grandfather (parental line):

Ephraim Williams

Grandmother (parental line):

Elizabeth Parker

Elbert Benjamine's Grandmother who largely raised him, at age 70.

Grandfather (maternal line):

Benjamin Greene

Great-grandfather (parental line):

John Williams

great-grandmother (parental line):

Nancy A. Gross

great-grandmother (parental line):

Elizabeth McCormick

great-great-grandmother (parental line):

Mary Ann

great-great-grandfather (parental line):

Jeremiah Williams

Friend:

Doris Chase Doane

After Benjamine's death, Doris Chase Doane became a secretary of the Church of Light till 1972.

Friend:

Fred Skinner

Fred Skinner was a co-founder and Vice President of the Church of Light.