Frederick Bligh Bond - Psychical Research

Psychical Research

Bligh joined the Freemasons in 1889, the Theosophical Society in 1895, the Society for Psychical Research in 1902, the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia in 1909 and the Ghost Club in 1925. As early as 1899 Bligh Bond had expressed his belief that the dimensions of the buildings at Glastonbury Abbey were based on gematria, and in 1917 he published, with Thomas Simcox Lea, Gematria, A Preliminary Investigation of The Cabala contained in the Coptic Gnostic Books and of a similar Gematria in the Greek text of the New Testament, which incorporated his own previously published paper, The Geometric Cubit as a Basis of Proportion in the Plans of Mediaeval Buildings.

In 1919 he published The Gates of Remembrance, which revealed that he had employed psychical methods to guide his excavation of the Glastonbury ruins, using first Captain John Allan Bartlett (‘John Alleyne’) as a medium, and later others. As a consequence of these revelations his relations with his employers, who strongly disapproved of spiritualism, deteriorated, and he was sacked in 1921.

From 1921 to 1926 he was editor of Psychic Science.

In 1926 Bligh Bond emigrated to the USA, where he was employed as education secretary of the American Society for Psychical Research and worked as editor on their magazine, Survival. Bligh Bond broke with the ASPR and returned to England in 1936, also rejoining the Ghost Club in the process, after supporting accusations against the medium Mina Crandon that she had fraudulently produced thumbprints on wax that she presented as being produced by the spirit of her dead brother, Walter.

During his time in the USA Bond was ordained, and in 1933 consecrated as a bishop, in the Old Catholic Church of America.