Early Life
He was born as Walter Yeeling Wentz in Trenton, New Jersey in 1878. As a teenager he read Madame Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine and became interested in the teachings of Theosophy.
He received both his B.A. and M.A. from Stanford University, where he studied with William James and William Butler Yeats. He then studied Celtic mythology and folklore at Jesus College, Oxford (1907); there he added his mother's Welsh surname Evans to his name, being known henceforth as Evans-Wentz. He travelled extensively, spending time in Mexico, Europe, and the Far East. He spent the years of the First World War in Egypt. He later travelled to Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) and India, reaching Darjeeling in 1919; there he encountered Tibetan religious texts firsthand.
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