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C. W. Leadbeater February 16, 1854 - March 1, 1934 Ordained an Anglican priest in 1878, theosophist and associate of Annie Besant, Charles Webster Leadbeater was consecrated a bishop in the Liberal Catholic Church in July of 1916. He wrote, among other books, The Science of the Sacraments and Glimpses of Masonic History. Much controversy is attached to his life. Leadbeater often claimed, for no apparent reason, to have been born on February 17, 1847 yet birth records clearly point to a later date. He was condemned in The Equinox, vol. x, by Aleister Crowley as a "senile sex-maniac". In 1906 he was forced to resign from the Theosophical Society for teaching masturbation yet, over the objections of some members, he was readmitted in 1909. His books on theosophy continue to receive wide distribution, although his promotion of Jiddu Krishnamurti (May 12, 1895 - February 17, 1986) as "the World Teacher" has led to much criticism. His initiation into International Co-Masonry on June 12, 1915 by James Ingall Wedgewood (1883/05/24- ), his association with many of the "fringe masons" and his subsequent writings on masonic themes have led anti-masons to mistakenly assume he speaks with some masonic authority and often quote, out of context, his writings on theosophy and the occult. Freemason: Irregular Administrator General, Universal Co-Masonic Order of Australia Portrait: Glimpses of Masonic History, C. W. Leadbeater. The Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Madras, India, 1926. 380pp. frontispiece. Reference: Gregory Tillett, The Elder Brother, London : Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.

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