Varieties of mystical experience in the writings of Virginia Woolf

Twentieth Century Literature, Winter, 1995 by Julie Kane

If one were to catalogue the various types of "mystical" experience appearing in the writings of Virginia Woolf, the list would be virtually indistinguishable from the topics of interest to the Theosophists and spiritualists of her day: telepathy, auras, astral travel, synesthesia, reincarnation, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of a Universal Mind. Yet, prior to writing The Waves, Woolf maintained a posture of utter contempt toward her fellow "mystics." In 1918 she attributed "lack of a good head on his shoulders" to John Mills Whitman, who "had dabbed in mysticism, & had made tables walz & heard phantom raps & believed it all" (Diary 1:114). In 1922 she confided that there was something a bit "mystic, silly" about her friend E. M. Forster (2:204). A year later she dismissed as absurd the rumor that Katherine Mansfield's ghost was haunting an acquaintance's house:

But then Brett is not scientific; she at once takes the old fables seriously, & repeats some jargon learnt of Dunning, but no doubt diluted in transit, about day & night, birth, & therefore death, all being beautiful. She feels the "contact" she says; & has had revelations; & there she sits deaf, injured, solitary, brooding over death, & hearing voices . . . did K.M. do something to deserve this cheap posthumous life? (2:237-38)

Prior to The Waves, Woolf's fictional characters, including her narrators, demonstrated the same cognitive dissonance between their mystical apprehensions of "reality" and their attitudes toward "mystics." The odious Mrs. Stuart in Jacob's Room "kept a parrot, believed in the transmigration of souls, and could read the future in tea leaves. Dirty lodging-house wallpaper she was" (72). The ridicule is somewhat gentler in To the Lighthouse, where "The mystic, the visionary, walking the beach on a fine night, stirring a puddle, looking at a stone, asking themselves 'What am I,' 'What is this?' had suddenly an answer vouchsafed them: (they could not say what it was)" (112). "Telling fortunes," in Orlando, is a diversion of the "riff-raff of the London streets" (56).

In late 1928, as she was preparing to write The Waves (at that time tentatively titled The Moths), Woolf wrote in her diary that "now, if I write The Moths I must come to terms with these mystical feelings" (3:203); and indeed she did. This article will explore the parallels between Woolf's "natural mysticism" and the teachings of Theosophy, the reasons why Woolf may have denied her own mystical bent for so many years, and the process by which she sought and received authorization for the mystical world-view from two respected intellectual sources before she could accept and embrace those feelings in herself.

Virginia Woolf was born in 1882, seven years after Russian emigre Helena Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society in New York. The organization's original mission, later somewhat abridged, was:

(1) To form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity without distinction of race, colour, or creed. (2) To promote the study of the world's religion and sciences, and to vindicate the importance of old Asiatic literature, namely, of the Brahmanical, Buddhist, and Zoroastrian philosophies. (3) To investigate the hidden mysteries of Nature under every aspect possible, and the psychic and spiritual powers latent in man especially. (Blavatsky 24)

Filling the spiritual void left in the wake of Darwinism with non-Christian, non-deistic, humanistic, yet "religious" teachings, the Theosophical Movement quickly spread to Europe and - rather ironically - to India, where it introduced many westernized Indian intellectuals to the concepts of their "native" philosophy for the first time. In London, women's rights / Indian affairs activist Annie Besant became head of the European and Indian chapters (1891), and later of the Society as a whole (1907). Her efforts on behalf of Home Rule for India most certainly placed her in contact with Leonard Woolf, who as a member of the Labour Party's Advisory Committee on imperialism consistently advocated self-government and dominion status for that nation (L. Woolf Downhill 223). In 1917 she lectured at the "1917 Club," which Leonard had helped found, and Virginia, in attendance, was not impressed:

She - a massive, & sulky featured old lady, with a capacious head, however, thickly covered with curly white hair, - began by comparing London, lit up & festive, with Lahore. And then she pitched into us for our maltreatment of India, she, apparently, being "them" & not "us." But I don't think she made her case very solid, though superficially it was all believable, & the 1917 Club applauded & agreed. (Diary 1:293)

Besant, who kept company in her early years with crusading atheist/MP Charles Bradlaugh, and who adopted the Indian youth Krishnamurti in order to groom him as the Theosophical Messiah, was to become the model for this unflattering cameo in The Waves: "That woman, you whisper discreetly, with the pearl pagodas hanging from her ears, was the pure flame who lit the life of one of our statesmen; now since his death she sees ghosts, tells fortunes, and has adopted a coffee-coloured youth whom she calls the Messiah" (115).