Gerald Massey

Photograph of Gerald Massey dated 1856

Gerald Massey (May 29 1828 - October 29, 1907) was an English self-taught Egyptologist and poet. He was born near Tring, Hertfordshire, UK, Europe.

Biography

Massey's parents were in poor circumstances. When little more than a child, he was set to hard work in a silk factory, which he afterward deserted for the equally laborious occupation of straw plaiting. These early years were rendered gloomy by much distress and deprivation, against which the young man strove with increasing spirit and virility, educating himself in his spare time, and gradually cultivating his innate taste for literary work.

"Later, Gerald Massey influenced Alvin Boyd Kuhn a comparative religion scholar. During the later years of his life, (from about 1870 onwards) Massey became increasingly interested in Egyptology and the similarities that exist between ancient Egyptian mythology and the Gospel stories. He studied the extensive Egyptian records housed in the British Museum, eventually teaching himself to decipher the hieroglyphics."

It has been stated that Massey, although he might have been considered a Christian Socialist, was in actuality a practicing druid, presumably a neo-druid. Not only that, Massey was elected Chosen Chief of the Most Ancient Order of Druids from 1880 through 1906. This assessment contrasts strongly with the description of him quoted just below by a friend and colleague, who praised him for having thrown off the constraints of religion in favor of science and philosophy for the advancement of knowledge.

A New York publisher, D. M. Bernett, wrote of his friend in the second edition of The World's Sages, Thinkers and Reformers on page 967:

Gerald Massey is a warm-hearted, genial man, and as a companion and friend he has few superiors. His interests and incentives are decidedly in the direction of Science and Rationalism. He has many years been freed from the binding and blinding theological creeds and obligations. He regards priestcraft as one of the great evils which mankind for thousands of years have been compelled to endure and support; and regards it as one of the most important works that men of the present time can engage in to demolish the idols of the past dark ages; to liberate the mind from the dwarfing and blighting effect of pagan and Christian mythology and to dispense with the officious and expensive services of a designing, useless, aristocratic and wily priesthood. He most desires to see the human race advance in knowledge and truth and mental freedom, which science and philosophy imparts to the diligent investigator. He believes ignorance to be the Devil, Science the Savior of the world.

Writing career

Massey's first public appearance as a writer was in connection with a journal called the Spirit of Freedom, of which he became editor, and he was only twenty-two when he published his first volume of poems, Voices of Freedom and Lyrics of Love (1850). These he followed in rapid succession with The Ballad of Babe Christabel (1854), War Waits (1855), Havelock's March (1860), and A Tale of Eternity (1869).

Many years afterward in 1889, Massey collected the best of the contents of these volumes, with additions, into a two-volume edition of his poems called My Lyrical Life. He also published works dealing with spiritualism, the study of Shakespeare's sonnets (1872 and 1890), and theological speculation. It is generally understood that he was the original for George Eliot's Felix Holt.

Massey's poetry has a certain rough and vigorous element of sincerity and strength which easily accounts for its popularity at the time of its production. He treated the theme of Sir Richard Grenville before Tennyson thought of using it, with much force and vitality. Indeed, Tennyson's own praise of Massey's work is still its best eulogy, for the Laureate found in him a poet of fine lyrical impulse, and of a rich half-Oriental imagination. The inspiration of his poetry is essentially British; he was a patriot to the core.

It is, however, as an Egyptologist that Gerald Massey is best known in the world of letters. He first published The Book of the Beginnings, followed by The Natural Genesis. By far his most important work is Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World, published shortly before his death.

Quotes

Unsourced

• "No lie can live forever."

• "They must find it difficult, those who have taken authority as truth, rather than truth as authority."

• "The mass of people who are Bible-taught never get free from the erroneous impressions stamped on their minds in their infancy, so that their manhood or womanhood can have no intellectual fulfillment, and millions of them only attain mentally to a sort of second childhood."

• "There's no dearth of kindness in the world of ours; Only in our blindness we gather thorns for flowers."

• "Not by appointment do we meet delight or joy; They heed not our expectancy; But round some corner of the streets of life they of a sudden greet us with a smile."

See also

• Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey - online: http://www.theosophical.ca/AncientEgyptIntroduction.htm
• web site dedicated to Gerald Massey
• An article by John Churton Collins in the Contemporary Review (May 1904).
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
• Gerald Massey: Chartist, Poet, Radical and Freethinker by David Shaw
• The Gerald Massey Collection at the Upper Norwood Joint Library