Besides Etta Wriedt in Detroit and Helen Lambert, Eileen Garrett and the Carringtons in New York, London was the major nucleus for King’s “psychic friends.” In his letter to Lambert describing his 1936 European tour, he informed her that “When in London, I met many friends of yours: Miss Lind af Hageby, [the author and psychic researcher] Stanley De Brath, and many others.
I shall have to wait until we meet again to tell you of some of the exceedingly interesting experiences I had while there. The names of Mrs. Ruth Vaughan, Mrs. [Helen] Hughes, Mrs. [Rose] Livingstone, Mrs. [Pamela] Nash and Miss [Naomi] Bacon will be familiar to you.
You can imagine what it meant to me to meet that remarkably gifted company.”

The Prime Minister received horoscopes from the English astrologers M.E. Young in 1924 and from Mrs. J.A. Stevenson in 1936 and 1938, and had his palm read by the English clairvoyant and palm reader Mrs. Quest Brown in 1930, 1931, and 1939. He was also greatly impressed by English writers on the occult such as F.W.H. Myers and Oliver Lodge, writing Helen Lambert in 1934 that Geraldine Cummins’ book, The Road to Immortality, with its foreword by Lodge, “has appealed to me as much as anything I have seen thus far.” He also very much enjoyed Cummins’ The Scripts of Cleophas, noting after reading a chapter from her Paul in Athens, “I find these books very helpful & soul quieting.”

King visited the Society for Psychical Research at 31 Tavistock Square during his stay in London in October 1934 when Lady Aberdeen arranged sittings for him with the automatic writing medium Hester Dowden. He contacted the British College of Psychic Science at 15 Queen’s Gate, S.W., when Estelle Stead, who arranged sittings for him with the trance medium Ruth Vaughan, informed him that the Society for Psychical Research “is a moribund affair.” The Prime Minister also developed a friendship with Mercy Phillimore, the secretary of the London Spiritualist Alliance, thanking her for the autographed books she had obtained for him. “Particularly do I value the inscription placed in his books by Sir Oliver Lodge, in one of which he generously refers to me as his friend.” He would have further “exceptionally interesting” sittings with Vaughan, Rose Livingstone and Pamela Nash in May and June 1937, calling his meeting with Livingstone “the most remarkable of the experiences I have had since being in England.”

In October 1936, James Lipscombe, the director of the Partridge and Company antique shop on 26 King Street, St. James Square, wrote the Prime Minister inviting him to see his galleries, “having in view the consideration of reduction of duties on antiques entering Canada.” Lipscombe ventured to think that “would be a fitting gesture coming in Coronation year.” King purchased a century-old crystal ball set in a brass frame with the names of four angels upon it for $100 [$2,143 in 2023 dollars]. Reflecting on his address to the League of Nations in Geneva regarding Hitler and Mussolini, he informed Lipscombe of his “desire to have a clear mind & heart, to help with the great questions of the day, of the aim towards perfection – the crystal a symbol of all this, so I made the purchase.” Returning to Canada the following day he recorded in his diary, “What the crystal may still reveal remains to be seen. It is a symbol of purity, of the pure heart – in which God is mirrored.” As he slept in Laurier House the first night, “the words that seem to crowd themselves into my mind were Alpha & Omega – the beginning & the end – … (the crystal sphere).

At last it would seem I have come into that mystery.” The next day he examined the crystal ball, “which I secured in London and which is a very precious souvenir, not only of the visit there but of this last trip.”

According to a 1953 Life magazine feature on the Prime Minister’s Spiritualism, the crystal ball “was a prized King possession.
Close friends say he actually used it and sometimes even urged them to do so. He displayed it in his Laurier House library near a portrait of his mother, and often spoke of its ‘fascination.’” In Michael Hollingsworth’s Video Cabaret production of The Life & Times of Mackenzie King, his mother materializes in a seance to warn him against his increasing friendship with the German Führer. “Adolf Hitler is a monster … Gaze into the crystal ball, Willie.
Oh Willie, gaze into the ball.” The Prime Minister does so and sees the horrors of Nazi aggression. But there is only one occasion in which King recorded in his diary using his crystal ball. A week after returning to Ottawa, he gazed at it for some time and finally “saw very clearly & distinctly what appeared to me to be a sheep, with an angel kneeling behind – a sort of female figure in the appearance of an angel.
A little later there appeared (…..) a maple leaf in green. I went to bed feeling sure what I had seen meant to follow Christ (He being symbolized by the lamb led to the slaughter) & Canada – for me to lead the people of Canada like a good shepherd.”

A day after meeting with British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and the Premiers of New Zealand and Rhodesia during the 1937 Imperial Conference, Mackenzie King returned to Partridge’s in May. James Lipscombe “was most friendly in his greeting, spoke most appreciatively of what the Government had done in removing duties on antiques.” He tried to interest King in a larger crystal ball, “as beautiful a thing as I have ever seen,” which, at $350 [$7,203 in 2023 dollars], King had found too expensive the year before. An American millionaire, the New York banker Alfred H. Caspary, was also at Partridge’s purchasing “magnificent” Ming vases which King thought rivaled those he had seen in the home of John D. Rockefeller Jr. After meeting King and “an interesting talk about art,” Caspary sent the Prime Minister the crystal ball as a gift. He took it to show it to his friends at the Institute for Psychical Research in June, twelve days before his meeting with Adolf Hitler.

King viewed the Führer from within a religious, spiritual, and psychic mindset from the first time he referred to the Nazi leader in his diary in April 1933. Hitler had been appointed the German chancellor at the end of January and became its de facto dictator in March.
When King attended Sunday service at St. Andrew’s in Ottawa on April 23, he heard Rev. W.H. Leathem’s “sermon on the Jews … good in part as an historical survey & right point of view as to Christian attitude towards at present time – a protest against Hitler’s action.”

In July 1934, King listened for half an hour to a radio broadcast of Hitler’s speech to the German parliament, the Reichstag, in which he justified the arrest of thousands and the execution of about one hundred – including that of Ernst R.hm, the head of the Nazis’ Brownshirts paramilitary organization, the Sturmabteilung – for allegedly planning an insurrection against Hitler. “It was like listening to some wild beast,” he recorded in his diary. “It was perfectly horrible – like some evil spirit let loose – literally like hell opened & let loose.
I have heard nothing so calculated to rouse and stir all evil passions of hate and violence. It was the demagogue appealing to the mob – Worse than that – Satan appealing to the world, through the voice of a man. Simply hideous. How a nation can survive under ‘government’ of that kind for any time I fail to see. The forces of hate and strife & evil are in control. One felt that Germany should be hemmed in by bands of steel on every side till that devil is exorcized. We are seeing the ‘reality’ of the forces of evil.”

Two weeks later, King commented on the assassination of the Austrian dictator Engelbert Dollfuss by Austrian Nazis and the movement of Italian troops to the Austrian frontier to prevent Hitler from absorbing the country. “It is the situation of 1914 over again, at the end of 20 years,” he recorded in his diary, “with the difference that internal revolution is now the essence of it … Europe will hardly escape without serious bloodshed. The dictatorships will have to go.
People cannot submit to them indefinitely. It is to be hoped that if revolution does come the other nations will leave the warring factions to themselves & not widen the area of conflict. The murder of Dollfuss followed on Hitler’s murder of the leaders of a revolution in Germany, can hardly end where they now stand.” He noted that he was reading the proof of Hansard for April, “what I said in the House of Commons of the fate of dictatorships etc.; it has all been literally fulfilled … What an age in which to live.”

Following the German occupation of the Rhineland bordering France, Belgium, and the Netherlands in March 1936, he read a pamphlet on Hitler’s foreign policy sent by the Duchess of Atholl in August. He observed, “It is amazing that with this frank statement of purpose, Hitler has been permitted to go to the lengths he has. It is no wonder France is terrified. All the things one has been taught to hold sacred and to revere have been reversed.” After agreeing to speak in a world broadcast re peace and the dangers of world war in September 1937, the Prime Minister again wondered how to “hold a country that is so quickly swept by passion & prejudice – a country & it is fast becoming the world – is like the individual in its conflicts between the higher & lower nature & which is to prevail … Today’s bible reading, little book, is on the blessedness of peacemakers – that is & will be my endeavour always.”

King’s perception of the reality of satanic evil manifested by Hitler in Nazi Germany was juxtaposed by his belief – made evident to him by his Bible readings, dream visions and seances – that he had a God-given mission to bring about peace on earth. In December 1934, he prepared his speech for the second annual National Liberal Federation in Ottawa in part on “Foreign Policy for Canada re Investigation into Armament Manufacture, sale & trafficking, and necessity for agreement not to sell etc.” Thinking about his speech, he felt this “should be the outstanding feature – Peace – the need for Peace – policies for peace etc. then trade & U.K. agreements.”

After Sunday church service, he “thought of the picture in the Tate Gallery – The Two Crowns which I must write and secure – I feel that is the underlying, the fundamental struggle & that my life work from now on is in facing it as a follower of Christ.” Sir Frank Dicksee’s painting juxtaposed an English medieval prince in golden armour and crown on a white horse who gazes up earnestly at the dead crucified Christ with His crown of thorns. King thought of “God vs. Evil – God vs. Baal – Prophet vs. King, Christ versus Caesar – sacrifice vs. force.” He wanted to tell Joan Patteson that it “seems clear to me that I have a special mission in the cause of peace and that I am being shewn this by others through revelation.” After church, he and Patteson “took the little table down” and “conversed” with “Phillip – John the Baptist – Luke the Physician – Pasteur – Laurier, Larkin, Mackenzie, Father & mother.”

According to C.P. Stacey, King had been introduced to Phillip – one of his controls who introduced other spirit entities – by the London automatic writing medium Hester Dowden. For King, John and Luke were “Like Moses & Elias appearing with Christ – & the voice telling of his divine mission – I believe I was speaking with the persons named – that they are carrying on their work beyond & seeking to train me so that they can use me in carrying on the work of Peace on Earth, goodwill to men.” When he gave his speech to the National Liberal Federation, he had a vision of Sir Wilfrid before waking and truly believed “many, if not most of the thoughts were ‘inspired.’” After discussing Germany and Italy with O.D. Skelton, King had been deeply impressed by words in Chapter 4 of Esther, “And who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this.” He “thought of what had been said to me in ‘conversations’ at Ottawa, with reference to the trouble in Europe, the settlement of the Italo- Abyssinian dispute, along with the Canada-U.S. and Canada-Japan agreements. The Jews were about to be destroyed. It was Mordecai’s and Esther’s task to save them.”

The Prime Minister genuinely believed he was preventing bloodshed and Canadian involvement in a war in Europe by appeasing Hitler and Mussolini. When the League of Nations proposal for the imposition of oil sanctions was discussed by members of his Cabinet in Council in 1936, he “was outspoken about our doing nothing which would encourage an act that might set Europe aflame … I think they all begin to realize something of the seriousness of world conditions today and the folly of regarding the League as other than papier mâché … We should be out of the European situation altogether.”

A week later, he informed Council that Hitler had denounced the Versailles and Locarno treaties and invaded the demilitarized Rhineland. He noted, “It is becoming apparent to all that Europe is a maelstrom of strife and that we are being drawn into a situation that is none of our creation by membership in the League of Nations.” Reading a dispatch on the League to Joan Patteson in July, he “said that I veritably believed I had helped to save the world from war at different times.” The same month he proposed to President Roosevelt the establishment of an international commission to investigate world conditions like the Canada-U.S. International Joint Commission and the Canadian Industrial Disputes Investigation Act. In August, King and Patteson read Aldous Huxley’s What Are You Going to Do About It?: The Case for Constructive Peace – “an argument against war as necessary and a case for constructive peace.” The PM felt “I must set out a policy in writing as Hitler has in ‘Mein Kampf ’ – a constructive policy for ‘protecting our peace.’” In October, he wrote, “it would be better, I think, if Canada were out of the League. To be of any real service, it should be a league for European countries only. The world experiment at this stage is premature.”

In view of the political situation in Europe, King established a Canadian Defence Committee in August 1936 consisting of himself and the Ministers of Finance, Justice, and National Defence. In his Canada and the Age of Conflict, C.P. Stacey wrote that though the Prime Minister was such a convinced spiritualist, he “rarely consulted the spirits on matters of public policy; it is perhaps the measure of his trouble that he did so now. In a series of seances a few days before the meeting with the service chiefs he raised the question. His father reported a discussion with King’s grandfather in terms which, one suspects, reflected a conflict going on in King’s own mind.” The military historian cited notes of s.ances on August 22, 1936, omitted from the online diaries. The spirit of John King [his father’s father] stated, “I have been telling Mackenzie I thought we ought to let Europe look after himself – and our country take care of itself – and for us to keep out of their claws – he thinks we can’t keep out – I would let them fight among themselves. He claims we ought to be prepared.” Stacey reported further, “When the Prime Minister asked the spirit of his old friend [Peter] Larkin, the sometime High Commissioner in London, for advice on the international situation, Larkin replied in one word: ‘Preparedness.’”

Mackenzie King had already informed Violet Markham in 1916 that he was writing his Industry and Humanity for the Rockefeller Foundation in “an effort to interpret the industrial problem in terms of obligations arising out of a spiritual interpretation of the universe instead of the continued acceptance of the materialistic interpretation which has governed in industry, and which has been responsible for the present world-war.” By the end of 1936, the Prime Minister again began seeing the crisis with Germany in largely spiritual terms. When he heard that the Protestant Church was openly defying the Nazis he noted, “It is a brave move. It means the leaders will become martyrs – the old story, only by martyrdom will the spirit of a people be saved … At last in Germany they have come to grips with the real issue – the life of the spirit vs. that of the beast: spirituality vs. animalism. The bread of life versus the satisfaction of the lust of the flesh.”

He discussed meeting Hitler with Anthony Eden, then British Foreign Secretary, in October 1936. “I had been born in Berlin [renamed Kitchener, Ontario, in September 1916] in Canada, in a county which had several communities of German names, and had represented that county [Waterloo North 1908-1911] in Parliament. Had also lived one winter in Berlin and “felt I knew the best sides of the German people. That I understood the difference between the Prussians and the Bavarians.” Eden encouraged King to meet with Hitler, feeling that declarations of friendship coming from Canada on behalf of the British Empire would be believed by the German Führer, while not from Britain. “That coming from me, an assurance – words of the kind might help to push him in the right direction … he himself would make any arrangements to that end, if I so desired.”

But O.D. Skelton strongly discouraged King’s proposal. “It would be resented in Canada; that it would only be flattering Hitler by having him feel that some more persons were coming to him; that he was so much of an Anglo-maniac that nothing could influence him. That his speech three months ago that he was following his star of destiny just as a somnambulist walks in his sleep, shewed how completely mystical he was, and unwilling to view anything to influence him in any way from different side.” Hitler had already granted a private audience in August 1936 to William Euler, the German-speaking former mayor of Kitchener who was King’s Minister of Trade and Commerce and the MP for Waterloo North, King’s first riding. They discussed German-Canadian economic relations. Euler subsequently informed the Toronto Daily Star that Hitler “impressed me with his sincerity and earnestness. He told me ‘we must have peace; we can’t afford to go to war.’ I believe him … I believe the Germans are behind Hitler almost to a man.”

King decided to wait attempting to meet with Hitler. Conferring with Stanley Baldwin at Chequers, the country estate of British Prime Ministers, he had suggested that Baldwin himself visit Hitler and “see if he could not, in that way, by direct contact, bring about some rapprochement between Britain and Germany, and also Germany and France, which would remove the possibility of Western Europe becoming involved in war.” Back in Ottawa, he cabled Baldwin in December again urging him to meet with Hitler. “Should he take this step and succeed, he would be regarded by future generations as, in some respects, the greatest Prime Minister Britain has ever had, as one who had saved the Empire and the world at the time of crisis incomparable in the history of either.”

On the eve of his sixty-second birthday, King prayed that the coming year “may not, at its close, become a year of universal terror. The fight is one on a world’s scale between the forces of good and evil … Out of it will come, I believe, a new and better life for the mass of men but at what price in the interval, I shudder to think. One can only pray that the forces of good combined may become sufficiently strong to keep the forces of evil at bay sufficiently long to let the world get onto its feet again. The most I imagine can be hoped for is the saving at least of a part of the world from all but annihilation of a multitude of men. One naturally hopes and believes that it will be one’s own land and the democracies which will be spared the conflict; if, however, they are, that will be a miracle indeed.” The Prime Minister was certain though that “Miracles so called are however no less a possibility in our day than they were at the beginning of the Christian era. We hope that it is another such era that mankind may be privileged to see.” He prayed that God’s grace “may be sufficient for me, that I may be found faithful in duty, equal to the tasks which come my way from day to day, and able in some slight way to help to make His Kingdom come, His will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.”

“Mackenzie King, London Mediums, Richard Wagner, and Adolf Hitler” is a excerpt from The Spiritualist Prime Minister: Volume 2: Mackenzie King and his Mediums by Anton Wagner, PhD, published by White Crow Books.