Occult Collections and Mysterious Coincidences at Rutgers

Abstract

Gorder’s article is based on her experience as the curator of the exhibition and as a articipant in the June 23, 2014 internationalcolloquium held in the Alexander Library, “The Soldier and theSeer: J. F. C. Fuller, Aleister Crowley, and the British Occult Revival" related to the occult collections at Rutgers. The conference was appropriately held in the Alexander Library, the home of SpecialCollections and University Archives. Her article also reflects her keen knowledge of the archives at Rutgers from which she unearthed information about Fairweather, J. F. C. Fuller, and John Hammond, who was an assistant dean at Rutgers, a contemporary of Fairweather, and a notorious wild child of a famous occultcommune. Gorder speculates on a series of mysterious coincidences that has made Rutgers an inadvertent source for occult studies.