HENRY NEWLIN STOKES
His siblings were :
Elizabeth, - m., J. H. Morris
J. Spencer, died unmarried
Samuel, son was Satyanand Stokes of India
Anna
Frederick
Source: Genealogy of the Stokes Family
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H.N. Stokes and the 0. E. Library Critic
Article in journal, Theosophical History, by Professor James Santucci, 1986
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THEOSOPHY, Vol. 23, No. 6, April, 1935 :
What may be called the negative opposition to the Adyar society
leadership has centered in Dr. H. N. Stokes of the O.E. Library Critic.
Like a "sea-lawyer" among the crew of a mismanaged ship, Dr. Stokes has
retained his membership in the Adyar society while diligently striving to
provoke a "mutiny" against the disastrous course taken. In his Critic,
number after number, has been published authentic information in the
nature of exposure of the many Adyar schemes. While purely iconoclastic,
the Critic has none the less opened the eyes of many to the iniquities
perpetrated in the name of Theosophy. Students of the "second Object" will
have noted the parallelism between the writing and work of Dr. Stokes and
that of the "fiery Tertullian" in the early history of the Christian churches.
Tertullian, capable only of doing scavenger work, was unsparing in his
denunciation of the "psychics," as he called them, then dominating the church
at Rome and, during his life-time, almost the only one among the Church bigots,
fanatics, and partisans, who had the courage and ability to check in some degree
the excesses, morally and religiously, prevalent in his day among those who claimed
Successorship to Jesus. Dr. Stokes course can be understood in both its virtues
and its defects by observation of his own theosophical history. Deceived and
betrayed by his trust in one of the earliest of the pseudo-occultists who had
"set up shop" on her own account, Dr. Stokes engaged in prison-reform work and
transferred his theosophical allegiance to Leadbeater and Mrs. Besant.
Disillusioned again, he thought to see in Mrs. Alice A. Bailey a great occultist.
Once more his eyes were opened to the negative truth, "all is not gold that glitters."
Since this discomfiture Dr. Stokes has been more bent on exposing the false than
finding the true. The pages of the Critic are a sort of theosophical "rogues'
gallery," but the miscellany of literature continually advertised affords as
little aid to true theosophical education as the "finger-print" records which
comprise the bulk of the text of the magazine itself. As a study in Karma, the
Critic is an informative example of the "law of correspondences:" the attempt to
"reform criminals" in one direction has its analogue in the effort to punish
criminals in the other.
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A quote from A Modern Revival of Ancient Wisdom by Alvin Boyd Kuhn :
In Washington, D.C., there has been published for many years by Mr. H. N. Stokes, a leaflet called The Oriental Esoteric Library Critic. Mr. Stokes conducts a circulating library of occult and Theosophic books, but finds time in addition to edit his diminutive sheet, which has been a veritable thorn in the flesh of the Besant leadership for many years. He seizes upon every inconsistency in the statements or policies of the Besant-Leadbeater-Wedgewood hegemony and subjects it to critical analysis. Many Theosophists tolerate his belligerent spirit and strong language for the sake of the facts he adduces, which have usually great pertinence to Theosophic affairs. He is particularly hostile to the developments of Neo-Theosophy under the Besant and Leadbeater régime, and above all to the institution of the Liberal Catholic Church as a Theosophic appanage.
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A quote from Ancient Wisdom Revived : A History of the Theosophical Movement by Bruce F. Campbell :
Often the critics' most powerful weapon was ridicule. One example will suggest both the questionable nature of some of Leadbeater's ideas and the futility of opposition. Leadbeater had taught that higher beings are pouring down streams of force on the world. He had claimed that one of the chief ways in which this force reaches the world is by being poured through individuals who are willing to act as passive channels or "pipes." To be a pipe, Stokes wrote, paraphrasing Leadbeater, is "the highest duty of a lodge memeber and while brotherhood is all very well, being a pipe is the most important thing of all." He added:
I once knew a man who finally became so completely convinced that he was an elephant that he endeavored to put his food into his mouth with the assistance of an improvised trunk. It was a harmless sort of madness, but it is as nothing to convincing yourself that you are a pipe . . . (thinking that) tremendous cosmic forces are pouring through you for the uplifting of the world. If any other than the eminent authority Bishop Leadbeater had told me that the best way in which I could serve the Masters, and incidentally my brother man, was sitting down quietly and imagining myself to be a pipe, I should have called it durned tommyrot.
To the three great paths of Devotion, Knowledge, and Action, Stokes wrote, "we now have added a fourth, the Path of Passive Inertia.
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Written by him:
My Personal Impressions of G. de Purucker
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NEW! CHEMISTRY CAREER : Found a web page about pyrite (aka "fool's gold) that quotes him.
"It is often said that this saline change is more characteristic of marcasite than of pyrite, but according to H. N. Stokes this statement is incorrect. Contrary, too, to popular belief, he has found a fibrous structure more common in pyrite than in marcasite. In some cases the two forms of iron disulphide occur in intimate association and are difficult to distinguish."
"For chemical means of distinguishing pyrite from marcasite consult H. N. Stokes, “On Pyrite and Marcasite,” Bull. U. S. Geol."
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