Wellesley Tudor Pole OBE (23 April 1884 – 13 September 1968) was an English Baháʼí, psychic, spiritualist and activist for vegetarianism.
Pole authored many pamphlets and books and was a lifelong pursuer of religious and mystical questions and visions, being particularly involved with the Baháʼí Faith and a quest for the Holy Grail of Arthurian Legend. He founded the Silent Minute campaign which was followed internationally. Late in life he resuscitated the Trust running the Chalice Well.
The musician and actor Edward Tudor-Pole is a grandson.
Biography Born and raised Wellesley Tudor Pole was raised with stories of elders and understandings of French kin Edmund de la Pole, 3rd Duke of Suffolk and English and Welsh kin Owen Tudor. Pole was born 23 April 1884, in Weston-super-Mare, son of Thomas Pole and Kate Wansborough. Pole was confirmed in the Anglican Church but the family understood this to mean the Broad church which had liberal respect for many religious ideas and of being uncritical of various apparent contradictions. His father was interested in Fabian socialism, theosophy, (probably Boehmian Theosophy) the Garden city movement and the whole family were involved in Spiritualism. Kate claimed the Tudor ancestry.
Pole briefly attended Dean Close School in Cheltenham for less than one year. He was educated at Blundell's School, where he later wrote of being unprepared for going to boarding school and had a child's visions and awareness of stories of reports of psychics. He reported school was a terrible experience with bullies and brutes. His sister described him as having a difficult childhood, not understood. At 11 years of age he felt relatively independent of family - "I am not a chattel" he recalled remarking. A rich elder friend Robert McVitie whom he felt as a kindred spirit quietly offered his parents to adopt him at age 14,(1898) but was denied, for which Pole later felt would have made a much better circumstance.
Nevertheless at the age of 20, instead of going to college, he found himself managing director of the family business in 1904.
Glastonbury and the cup Pole's life of experiencing visions took its first lasting step forward in 1902. That year he had a serious illness with some kind of vision. Whether that experience or another, he also later claimed having vivid dreams of being a monk at Glastonbury which inspired a strong enough interest for him to visit there that year and had further experiences that led to further trips "to gain inspiration" and spoke of it as a pilgrimage. In light of later developments it may be interesting to take note of Thomas Breakwell who died in Paris in 1902.
Ultimately a cup was found about which there was much inquiry and news coverage. Pole and his assistants recounted the whole affair as they knew it before a group in July 1907 including Archdeacon of Westminster Basil Wilberforce saying "He may be deluded himself but one thing is perfectly certain, that he is not going to attempt to delude you." In the early 20th century there was a porous relationship between liberal Christianity and esoteric or spiritualist ideas, eastern philosophies, social causes, and eastern religions. Over 40 "high status" individuals were at this meeting to discuss the cup and Pole's and assistants experiences. These 40 can be thought of as a spectrum of interests in this milieu inside and outside mainstream Christianity when they met - some of them leaders in that discourse of ideas like Pole who can be summed up as a centrepiece of a 'Celtic' network (in the sense of Celtic by connotation and reputation, though not history,) and Albert Basil Wilberforce who was a leader among the more Christian elements though with clear proclivity to associate with other kinds of religiosity.
The story was recounted for the group. In later 1904 Pole had a feeling of a pending discovery to be made in Glastonbury that "would link the founder of the Christian faith with modern leaders of Christian thought" and left word to watch for such a discovery with the Roman Catholic College priest there. "Pole was inspired by the idea that a pre-Christian culture had existed in Ireland which had extended itself to Glastonbury and Iona, and which was the repository of an authentic Western mystical tradition, the true roots of spiritual life in the West.… Still, his pursuits also blended identification with the 'mystic East', with interest in Hermeticism, Theosophy and Spiritualism. In some respects, Tudor Pole's pursuits mirror the activities of those promoting the 'Celtic Revival' in Ireland during this period, though a distinct alterity in their worldview is acknowledged."
In Pole's second visit he envisioned "three maidens" who would help in the "work" in Glastonbury and had brought his sister Katherine in on successor visits there. Then in 1905 he added two friends to the interest and trips - Allen sisters who went in early September and another 11–12 November - during the latter of which one had a vision of a woman's hand raising a cup out of a stream and returned. Then Pole envisioned a specific spot while at a business meeting in Bristol and was able to send the Allen sisters the same day to the particular spot - they had been there a couple times previous. There amidst some 3 feet of water and another couple feet of mud they found a cup but decided it was too sacred for them to handle so they washed it and left it in the water. 1 October 1906, Pole was able to send his sister on a chill rainy day to get it and brought it to their Clifton house in Bristol. This well was the "St. Bride's Well", (a reference to Saint Brigid of Kildare,) a kind of Holy well.*
Pole began to consult with people about the cup but also to entertain the visionary experiences of others that appeared to link with his own and led to Pole's quest. In mid-December Pole consulted with Annie Besant (president of British Theosophy Society the next year,) as well as the British Museum and South Kensington Museum and Swedish Princess Karadjasee
who connected him with Helena Humphreys who from then was much involved with the quest. She felt it was a cup from the Last Supper and handed toward Peter which was kept by a woman attendant and then felt the cup had migrated to a European Church in between until finally at the ruins of Glastonbury. They had this meeting in January 1907. Pole also had felt something important about a "Church somewhere on the Continent" as well.
Pole also consulted with A. E. Waite who confirmed it had some characteristics of the Holy Grail, details of which were linked with the legend of King Arthur in the vision of Sir Percival of it. However later in September Waite disavowed the cup as the Holy Grail itself.
In fall 1906 and again in spring 1907 Pole consulted with medical doctor and collector John Goodchild who slowly unfolded his story. Goodchild claimed to have bought it in 1887, that his father had claimed it with a sense of importance, and following a vision in Paris in 1897 and the death of his father (who sent it back by courier) decided to leave it in a well in Glastonbury. Goodchild's Paris vision indicated that his 'visitor' "came to you at very great danger to myself to tell you…", which may be the first indication of ideas of a threatening conditions among the discarnate. Goodchild tried to watch out for its future discovery and even brought a woman friend to the well hoping for it to be discovered. Goodchild had had visionary experiences in August/September 1906 and as a result sent Pole a letter with a drawing of one of his visions - a vision of a cup with five stars - to be passed on to whomever "the pilgrims who have just been to Glastonbury" were and was there in late September when the Allen sisters returned after their original find of the cup though he did not relate his history with the cup to them but was very enthusiastic of their find. Pole and his sister then visited Goodchild in late September but shared only part of the story. Pole never did find any confirming evidence of Goodchild's statements on the history of the cup. Of the origin, placing, and recovery of the cup, some processes and timings have been associated with Celtic and mystical thought and may have been a paradigm by which both Pole and Goodchild may have had a common framework of thinking. But the importance observed with respect to the cup was seen amidst ideas of matriarchal background of Ireland via Goodchild compared to a more Arthurian context for Pole.
23 June 1907, Pole showed the cup to the Archdeacon of Westminster who invited then visitor Samuel Clemens who remarked upon it, and then to a group of notables 20 July including George Howard, 9th Earl of Carlisle, Henry Pelham-Clinton, 7th Duke of Newcastle, Charles Wood, 2nd Viscount Halifax, Reginald John Campbell, William Crookes and Oliver Lodge, and Whitelaw Reid, who gathered at home of Basil Wilberforce.
Along with reporting on the visionary experiences leading to the finding of the cup, Pole reported other visionary experiences which he claimed as prophecies. These were "received instructions" while awake and not through a seance: There would be "definite tangible proof" connecting the cup to Jesus. The cup will return to Glastonbury and the area would become a cite of physical and spiritual healing and advance the idea it was the place of the first touch of Christianity to the land - see Myths and legends of Glastonbury. Pole warned of "a Divine outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the world… and… great intelligences… preparing channels through which this Divine power, this second coming, this great outpouring of the Holy Ghost, shall be manifested," which, conditionally, could be a channeled by and magnify church unity and the high position of Britain, but if not it would "no longer remain the great nation she is, and the centre of the world will be transferred to a very different country" and "other agencies will be found". And a signal event in this process and a kind of deadline for that condition of unity was going to be in 1911 when "those who have been watching and preparing the way for the second coming will recognize a great teacher who will be here and will be recognized by a few in that year. The great teacher will be a woman and recognized by those who are, as I say, preparing the way, by a seven pointed star that will be worn on her forehead.…[but] not be recognized by official Christianity…."
The prophecies were envisioning a rebirth of Christian unity among the islands of Great Britain and a rival to the Roman Catholic Lourdes site, but if unity could not be achieved another situation would be found and another country take the fore in the world.
The cup became very well-known and is still commented upon in a variety of contexts.*
Wilberforce accepted the cup as the Holy Grail. Pole claimed it was at one time in the possession of Jesus and provided the opportunity for a new wider religious framework in terms of respect for geography as well as a breadth of ideas which later were taken up as a theme of New Age thought. The fact that newspaper accounts validating the seriousness of the proceedings and reception of the claim is argued to fit into this being not just about a curio but about a meeting of ideas including but not dominated by differences of ideas.
The meeting had been meant to be quiet and private among the group but it was published in the newspaper a week later. Indeed it was carried in the news internationally.*
Though the cup was soon understood by most to be too modern and Wilberforce's enthusiasm for it caused complications with his superiors, Wilberforce continued his associations and investigations of religious connectivity. For Pole the meeting introduced him to a higher profile of engagement with the exchange of ideas.