This study concerns itself with a now-forgotten religious group, Spiritualists, and how their ensuing discussions of Shakespeare's meaning, his writing practices, his possible collaborations, and the supposed purity and/or corruption of his texts anticipated, accompanied, or silhouetted similar debates in Shakespeare Studies.

This book stands with respect on the shoulders of four centuries of Francis Bacon’s biographers, referencing historical and cipher inquiries about his noble person and transcendent body of work, but pushing further to ask: Did his vision for the ages, the Great Instauration, die with him? The premise of the fine, foregoing biographies has been to discern and explain the secrets of a great, historic personality, perhaps the world’s greatest genius, from a fixed birthdate to a fixed date of death. The less conventional premise of this book is to explain the context of the life of the person, Francis Bacon, as one crucial chapter within a long continuity of lifetimes, yet unending. Francis, and those closest to him, manifested the beginning of the Great Instauration in the form of an extraordinary array of civilization-building services, sacrificially, under persecution, for the love of humanity and the latent divinity within the people. Francis’ conclave of literary men saw themselves as brothers, demonstrating a constructive vision and true charity, outside the churches which had suppressed as heresy what the people needed to know about nature and themselves. How did twelve-year old Francis see the need and then generate the beneficial concept of the Great Instauration, meaning the restoration of a golden age of abundance, a paradise lost? This would require prior knowledge and likely actual engagement in such a civilization. Why was it lost? Why did he persevere under Job-like trials to produce a legacy of enlightenment he knew would only bear fruit long after his passing? And, is a soul of this magnitude lost forever to humanity at his passing? None of these questions can be answered entirely by original source documents, especially when for safety’s sake Francis deliberately hid or obscured the records of that lifetime. To answer the questions, the scope of Elizabeth Clare Prophet’s biography of Francis Bacon honors the existing body of documented research and then necessarily expands the lens of discovery to summarize a continuous chain of prior lives, the lifestream of this soul.

This fascinating 1906 treatise explores the seminal work of Francis Bacon with particular reference to cryptic rhymes and their possible connections to the occult. Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) was an English statesman and philosopher who served as Lord Chancellor and Attorney General of England. His works are hailed as having developed the scientific method and were influential throughout the scientific revolution. Contents include: “Francis Bacon Confesses, in the Presence of Death, to Having Written Rhymed Books”, “What was Francis Bacon's Estimation of Poesy?”, “Francis Bacon's Predilection for the Occult Arts”, “What Part do the Words 'Name' and 'Darts' lay in Bacon's Writings?”, “The Mysterious Manner of the Actor Shakespeare”, “What Part foes Rhyme play in Shakespeare's Dramas?”, etc. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with the original text and artwork.