Theos-Talk Archives (June 2005 Message tt00425)

Besides the "African Magic" article, are
there other articles, letters, etc. also
signed "Tau Tria Delta"???

See the quote below for possible leads.

Daniel


Quoted from:

http://www.geocities.com/laxaria/ripguide1.html

In 1994 Melvis Harris, a leading authority on the Ripper murders, 
published a book entitled The True Face of Jack the Ripper (London: 
Michael O'Mara Books, 1994). In it he lists thirteen "essential 
points" that must be met for a suspect of the 1880s to be the 
Ripper. Only one man, in his opinion, fits all thirteen points: an 
English soldier, doctor, and self-professed Black Magician named 
Robert Donston Stephenson, better known to his contemporaries as Dr. 
Roslyn D'Onston. 

In an unpublished article entitled "Jack the Ripper," the infamous 
Aleister Crowley wrote: 

After the last of the murders, an article appeared in the newspaper 
of W. T. Stead, the Pall Mall Gazette, by Tau Tria Delta, who 
offered a solution for the motive of the murders. It stated that in 
one of the grimoires of the Middle Ages, an account was given of a 
process by which a sorcerer could attain "the supreme black magical 
power" by following out a course of action identical with that of 
Jack the Ripper. 

Crowley claimed to have studied the astrological aspects of the 
Ripper murders. He continues: 

In every case, either Saturn or Mercury were precisely to the 
Eastern horizon at the moment of the murder (by precisely, one means 
within a matter of minutes). 

Mercury is, of course, the God of Magic, and his averse distorted 
image the Ape of Thoth, responsible for such evil trickery as is the 
heart of black magic, while Saturn is not only the cold 
heartlessness of age, but the magical equivalent of Satan. He is the 
old god who was worshipped in the Witches' Sabbath. 

"Tautridelta" also published an article entitled "African Magic" in 
the November 1890 issue of Lucifer, the Theosophical journal. Here 
is an interesting excerpt concerning the typical necromancer: 

The very least of the crimes necessary for him (or her) to commit to 
attain the power sought is actual murder, by which the human victim 
essential to the sacrifice is provided . . . Yet, though the price 
is awful, horrible, unutterable, the power is real. 

This could easily be the creed of the Ripper. "Tautridelta" was 
later determined to be Dr. D'Onston/Stephenson. The article 
published in the Pall Mall Gazette ran under the title "Who Is the 
Whitechapel Demon?" In this essay he explained that a necromancer 
needed "a certain portion of the body of a harlot" and that the 
Ripper murders marked the points of a profaned cross over London. 

D'Onston/Stephenson was a slippery critter. He dropped out of the 
world completely from 1891 to 1896. "The missing five years baffle 
us. There is not the slightest trace of the man until 1896." 
[Harris, p. 129] He might have been anywhere, doing things of a 
Ripper-like nature. (I wonder at this timing -- Holmes' Great Hiatus 
overlaps Stephenson's vanishment.) Eventually he disappeared as 
thoroughly from history as the Ripper himself. In 1904, after 
publishing a book called The Patristic Gospels, "He simply vanished 
without trace. Despite repeated searches no death certificate can be 
found within the British Isles or anywhere else." The last man to 
see Dr. D'Onston/ Stephenson was his publisher, Grant Richards, who 
called him "a weird uncanny creature." [Harris, p. 139] (Update: 
Ivor Edwards, author of Jack the Ripper's Black Magic Rituals, 
recently tracked down Stepenson's grave site. He will no doubt tell 
all in his next book. Of course, we can always say it's not really 
Stephenson buried there!]