The artist who would be king
Nicholas Roerich: The Artist Who Would Be King
John McCannon
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022
ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-4741-7
Hardbound, 616 pages
Reviewed by Joseph Szimhart, May 2024
Cosmic heroism or comic heroism? That is the question that comes to mind after reading this expansive and in-depth history by John McCannon about the enigmatic Russian artist and mystic who nearly half a century ago I viewed as my favorite artist and guru. Nicholas K. Roerich or Rerikh (1874-1947) and his remarkable, attractive spouse, Helena Roerich (1879-1955) founded a Theosophy sect they called The System of Living Ethics or Agni Yoga. Late in the 20th Century, Agni Yoga emerged as one of the most successful versions of Helena Blavatsky’s esoteric section of the Theosophical Society founded in 1875. Blavatsky’s Theosophy, as this author reiterates, has had an enormous influence on what came to be called the New Age Movement, especially that aspect that involves channeled spirits, ascended masters, space brothers, and ethereal adepts of the Great White Brotherhood. Agni Yoga predicted a new age or Satya Yuga emerging from the apocalyptic Kali Yuga in the first half of the 20th Century. The inner cult surrounding the Roerichs believed for a time that Nicholas and Helena would be the recognized leaders of the newly revealed Kingdom of Shambhala centered in the Altai Mountains from which they would guide all religions and governments by fusing Communism with Buddhism. Thus, the subtitle of this book: The Artist Who Would Be King.
We learn that Helena Roerich and her husband attended séances early in their relationship. Along with many friends in their circle, especially among the Symbolist movement in art, they assumed there was a scientific way to approach religion through occultism. The theoretical climate at the time accepted telepathy and extra-sensory perception or ESP with animal magnetism as measurable energy forces similar to the newly discovered (in 1895) x-rays. Around 1900, Nicholas, while extending his art studies, attended his first séance in Paris. The medium in trance told him something about his recent plans that he said no one could have known. Like any number of naïve seekers who rely too heavily on personal experience when examining the occult worlds, he was hooked for life, eventually believing in guidance from majestic beings both directly and through his wife. After reading Blavatsky’s works as a young woman, Helena Roerich began channeling Blavatsky’s mystic masters, especially the entity called Morya, using the dissociative technique of automatic writing, or writing while in trance. McCannon documents that Helena Roerich was plagued by migraines and epilepsy or dizzy spells and this form of meditation seemed to alleviate her symptoms. She interpreted her afflictions as ways her psyche was preparing her spiritually for her life’s work to reveal The Teaching (as she called it) of the Great White Brotherhood to guide the human race. She viewed this alchemy of her spirit as the “fiery worlds,” thus Agni Yoga, Agni being the god of fire, the friend and protector of humanity in the Hindu pantheon. Leaves of Morya’s Garden: The Call (1924) was their first book of channeled messages after the Roerichs launched their movement in London around 1920.
Our author, Dr. John McCannon, has taught at Southern New Hampshire University since 2011 after teaching at other universities. His teaching expertise concentrates on Russia and modern Europe, the history of aviation, and military history. Nicholas Roerich is his latest book that took years of effort with support from many endowments including National Endowment for the Humanities and the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies. His secular approach to this unwieldy topic strikes a cautious balance to report a range of critical and laudatory views while stressing what he could glean from facts in the international historical record. I have been reading about Agni Yoga and the Roerichs since 1975 and I encountered some of McCannon’s significant sources, so in some ways I felt like I was in personal territory while pouring through this outstanding book. McCannon admits in the end that much more can and should be done to properly flesh out Roerich’s significance and influence in the arts, spirituality, and Eurasian geopolitics, but I can say that this book filled in a lot of holes in my considerable though not nearly as vast awareness of all things Roerich.
McCannon documents that Nicholas Roerich consistently impressed his peers with extraordinary artistic talent, performed well and tirelessly as an art school director, was a talented essayist, and sustained self-promotion with alluring determination. We have no evidence that he ever smiled for a camera. Many famous acquaintances, among them Einstein, Indira Ghandi, Nehru, Rabindranath Tagore, George Bernard Shaw, and Eleanor Roosevelt, found him intellectually sophisticated and subtly charming. Privately, he could be cantankerous, calling ex-followers Judases and traitors. Those colleagues and fellow artists who did not buy into his mystical claims viewed him as “amusing” (305), “insufferably calculating and subtle” (124), and “a huge joke” (363) with “comic ineptitude” (420). As an artist, he was known for thousands of idyllic mountain scenes and colorful, stylized illustrations of religious heroes, ancient churches, and archeological sites. Some called him the Gauguin of the north though his style more so reflected influences from Japan, Tibet, and the western painter Ferdinand Hodler (1853-1918). Lately, larger Roerich paintings have fetched millions of dollars at auction.[1] Roerich designed many sets and costumes for theater and ballet performances, the most famous being Prince Igor and the then radical Rite of Spring initially performed in Paris in1913. He collaborated with composer Igor Stravinsky, the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, and the pompous promoter, Sergie Diaghilev.
Besides his wife’s theosophy and spiritualism, McCannon lists a host of occult influences that shaped Nicholas Roerich’s mystical outlook. One of the more interesting to me is the 1923 memoir by Polish occultist Ferdynand [sic] Ossendowski, Beasts, Men, and Gods. Both Roerichs read this popular book soon after publication (200). I ordered a copy and read it prior to reading McCannon’s historic biography. Curiously, my 2019 edition uses a Roerich painting of a Himalayan peak for its cover illustration, though Roerich had absolutely nothing to do with the story. Ossendowski records his purportedly harrowing escape in 1920 from Red-army controlled Siberia with Poles and White Russians. The saga ends in 1921 when he encountered the magical and miraculous legends in Tibet: “[Hutuktu Jelyb Djamstrap] told me the story of the semi-realistic arrival of the powerful King of the World from the subterranean kingdom [Agharti]…and only then did I begin to understand that in the legend, hypnosis or mass vision, whichever it may be, is hidden not only mystery but a realistic and powerful force capable of influencing the course of the political life of Asia.”[2] The Roerichs apparently applied this legend to themselves and never gave it up.
This review would meander far too long if I tried to fairly represent what this 600-plus pages book covers, but I will mention an important encounter between Roerich and the United States government carefully dissected by the author. For several years until 1936, Henry A. Wallace, the Secretary of Agriculture under Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1933 to 1941 (and Roosevelt’s vice president from 1941-1945) was smitten with Roerich as his guru. Wallace, a liberal progressive, was also a Freemason who dabbled in astrology and occult spirituality—nothing unusual among the elite in society at the time—so his recruitment into Agni Yoga’s small inner circle went smoothly. Roerich gave Wallace the spiritual name “Galahad” while unknown to him FDR was the “flaming one” and the “wavering one.” Amazingly, considering the vast impact of Agni Yoga, Roerich’s inner circle that we might label his loyal cult following numbered less than twenty people at any time.
McCannon lists 24 code words and spiritual names on page xv. For example, Nicholas was Fuyama, Helena was Urusvati, and for Kansas they used “Mongolia” when communicating by letter with Wallace as “Galahad” and each other about Roerich’s secret “Great Plan” to organize the world under the Hierarchy of Morya’s hidden brotherhood. Interestingly, the author inserted the three triangular dots that symbolized Morya’s signature as a section break throughout this book hundreds of times. The three-dot design in a circle worked as a maroon motif on a white ground for Roerich’s Banner of Peace proposal for which he received several Nobel Peace nominations. The banner when flown was to signal warring nations to spare cultural institutions and monuments. Although 21 western nations including the United States signed the symbolic peace pact around 1935, most politicians scoffed at its naïve intent. As originally conceived, the Roerich Peace Pact was never applied.
Wallace arranged for Roerich and his son George Roerich to lead a scientific expedition to the Far East to seek drought-resistant plants and seeds in 1934. Two competent scientists assigned to the Roerichs soon realized how inept their bosses were, complained angrily, but Wallace sided with his guru and fired the scientists whose careers suffered for a time thereafter. Roerich was more interested in visiting sacred places and making contacts with Soviet authorities to try to sell them on his secret Plan for a Red Shambhala and a Eurasian kingdom. Any seeds he and his son gathered had little to no practical impact on the drought problem in America.
Roerich’s Soviet government contacts never took him seriously as the guru proposed to fuse Buddhism with Communism (Lenin would have turned in his grave), but they thought he might be useful. Roerich was not a professional agent or spy, but he appeared to act as one. Suspecting he was a Soviet spy in 1928, the British authority detained Roerich with his caravan in Tibet for months through a harsh winter that killed 90% of the expedition’s animals. Colonel Bailey eventually and cordially received the haggard Roerich party at his station in Gangtok. Roerich did not know that it was Bailey who ordered the harsh detention. Bailey’s impression of Roerich after extensive discussions was this: “From a literary and scientific point of view,” [Roerich was, in his opinion] “a humbug, bad painter, [and] afflicted with megalomania” (334). In other words, Bailey was consistent with other official impressions of Roerich that he was more delusional than dangerous.
Wallace reversed his loyalty to Roerich by 1936 but not because of pressure from alarmed politicians. A disaffected Roerich disciple, Esther Lichtmann, who challenged Helena Roerich as the true and only medium for Morya, arranged a clandestine meeting with Wallace with another disgruntled Roerich disciple, the real estate magnate Louis Horch who supported the entire Roerich enterprise for years. Esther also met with the president, FDR. They convinced Wallace that “Morya” had stopped supporting the Roerichs and that Esther was the true medium going forward. Wallace fell under the new Morya’s influence for a time. This change of heart allowed Wallace to listen to FDR and others who had soured on the guru. Years later, Wallace thought he had put the entire embarrassing affiliation with Roerich behind him until one of Roerich’s inner circle leaked copies of the turncoat Wallace’s private guru letters. Thus, when Wallace ran for president in1948 as a Progressive, the leak triggered no small amount of ridicule from the press, especially from the caustic pen of right-wing pundit, Westbrook Pegler. But back in 1936, Horch and the government presented a tax evasion case against Roerich who fought it for years from India but lost. The disgraced Roerichs with several loyal disciples remained in India’s Kulu Valley in view of Roerich’s beloved Himalayas after 1936, effectively in exile for most of the rest of their lives. Despite their pleas to Moscow, Joseph Stalin’s USSR never allowed them to return to their homeland.
McCannon skillfully documents how Roerich zigzagged politically from anti-Communist as a White Russian to pro-Communist and beyond into Eurasian geopolitics. Roerich, in his pro-Soviet phase, illustrated Lenin as a hero in some paintings. Overall, we learn that his heart was always Russian while his spirituality remained theocratic and hierarchical.
With the war still raging in 1944, FDR decided to drop Wallace as his Vice President as he ran for a third term, picking Harry S. Truman for inauguration in January 1945. Wallace’s dalliance with Roerich had a deep effect on this decision. McCannon explores the what if factor: What if Wallace had never met Roerich and remained as FDR’s replacement in 1945? As president with pro-Soviet, anti-war sensibilities, would he have ordered atomic bombs to be dropped on Japan? Would he have held as strongly as Truman against Communism if at all? The author suggests that Roerich’s oddball occult influence on the U.S. government may have altered world history in ways the guru never intended.
One change Roerich may have influenced remains on a U.S. one-dollar bill. The Eye of Providence atop the pyramid is an old Masonic symbol that was on reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States since 1872. McCannon provides strong evidence beyond the rumors that Roerich likely encouraged Wallace and others to add the Great Seal’s pyramid with its floating eye to the dollar in 1935. The all-seeing eye to Roerich represented the hidden hierarchy behind Morya that watches over us all.
McCannon tells us that Roerich and his wife passed through Santa Fe, NM twice in 1920 on a cross-country tour to cities that were exhibiting his artwork. He does not mention that the Roerichs were brief guests of artist and architect William Penhallow Henderson at his villa in Tesuque, NM north of Santa Fe. Both Henderson and Roerich were friends of the famous Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore who likely introduced them. I know this because I met and worked for years as an art consultant for Henderson’s irascible daughter and only child, Alice Henderson Rossin (1907-1988). I was steeped in Agni Yoga teachings at the time, so I asked Alice in 1978 whether she knew of the Roerichs. She was shocked and impressed to hear their names mentioned again after many decades. Mrs. Rossin showed me a large, elegant oil portrait that her father had painted from life of Tagore who sat for it in that room. She confirmed to me that Tagore recommended the Roerichs to her father. She told me that she first met them when she was twelve on the very spot where I was standing. “They were small and very formal,” she recalled. At the time, I felt like I was standing on holy ground.
This feeling of awe or holiness toward a guru goes a long way to explain why someone like me or Louis Horch and his spouse Nettie Horch would sustain a cult-like relationship with a guru. As in folie a deux or a shared delusion, once the mysterious gloss of awe evaporates for any reason, a feeling like waking up from a dream occurs. Reality testing thereafter functions much better. This happened to me around 1980 when I realized through tedious research and soul searches that Madame Blavatsky was both imagining or fabricating her affiliation with Morya and the White Brotherhood of Tibetan and Indian adepts. McCannon states, “…in Anglophone treatments of the subject, the collapse of Roerich’s support in America tends to be explained as an awakening on the Horches’ [sic] part, much like the “deprogramming” of cult members who come to understand the fraudulence of their leader’s mystical pretensions” (417). McCannon goes on to say on page 417 that in Horch’s case the “deprogramming” event was “not casting aside an occult mindset for a secular one. They were rather swapping one guru for another”, namely Esther Lichtmann. In my case, I eventually dumped the entire Theosophy and occult gambits for a more pragmatic approach to spirituality and reality.
As for Roerich’s fanciful geopolitics, his influence in Russia continued. During the Soviet perestroika period in 1989, both President Mikhail Gorbechev and his wife Raisa were promoters and serious fans of Agni Yoga with its call for a Russian-centered Shambhala. Millions of Russian admirers flocked to the movement. Roerich was officially repatriated much to the dismay of the Russian Orthodox Church that for decades anathematized Agni Yoga as a “totalitarian anti-Christian sect” (510). Vladimir Putin’s ex-wife was an Agni Yoga promoter as was President Putin until pressure from the Orthodox Church caused Moscow state government to denounce Roerichism again in 2017. The relatively new International Center of the Roerichs (MTsR) was dismantled and moved to a far less prominent street in Moscow. McCannon described the original Roerich center or MTsR as a weird mix of a museum and religious recruitment facility, not unlike a “Scientology information center” (509).
On a personal note, I will mention my relationship with Sina Lichtmann Fosdick who as a young pianist along with her husband Maurice Lichtmann and her sister-in-law Esther were among Roerich’s earliest personal supporters. Unlike her husband and his sister Esther, Sina remained loyal to the belief and the causes of Agni Yoga until her death in 1983. She appears dozens of times throughout this book. I met her in 1976 at the Roerich Museum in West Manhattan. Despite my enthusiasm for Roerich and Agni Yoga at the time, she remained graciously reserved with me and never pushed her views. We exchanged around seven letters through 1981, mostly containing my simple questions about meanings in Agni Yoga with her curt responses typed on small note papers. When I was defecting from the Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT) in 1980, Sina told me that Mark and Elizabeth Prophet of CUT approached her (possibly before 1970) to join Agni Yoga to their new movement. The Prophets claimed that Morya merged the Agni Yoga (AY) teachings with the “I AM” Activity founded by Guy Ballard and Edna Ballard, thereby creating a new “dispensation” under the Prophets as the unique “Messengers” of the Great White Brotherhood.[3] Sina, in effect, would have to submit to them. Sina, as the director of AY at the time, flatly if politely refused. This did not stop the Prophets from using AY teachings and claiming that their youngest daughter, Tatiana, was the reincarnated Helena Roerich. Sina told me that Helena Roerich attained her “light body” when she passed in 1955, never to reincarnate again. Either way, the cosmic theatric continue whether you believe in them or not.
[1] Bonhams auction, 5/June/2013: https://www.bonhams.com/press_release/13835/
[2] Ossendowski, Ferdinand, (1923) Beasts, Men, and Gods (2019 edition, Anados Books), p. 126.
[3] The Chela and the Path: Keys to Self-mastery in a New Age by Ascended Master El Morya and Elizabeth Clare Prophet (Summit University Press, 1975)
Other references I read for this review:
Red Shambhala: Magic, Prophecy, and Geopolitics in the Heart of Asia by Andrei Znamenski (Quest Books of Theosophical Publishing House, 2011)
The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture edited by Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (Cornell University Press, 1997)
