What Pelley would most like to be remembered for, by all accounts, is his collection of sacred speakings known as The Golden Scripts.
These are among his most publicly problematic writings as their source is attributed to Jesus Christ. Pelley used the title Elder Brother when referring to Christ as this was the name the voice asked to be used in one of His early messages.
The fine line between inspired writing or composition and a direct line to Christ is a delicate one where public acceptance is concerned. On the one hand, Christians tend to allow for a very personal relationship with Christ through His Holy Spirit residing within, on the other, anyone who goes to far in saying Jesus has spoken to them is often dismissed.
Many preachers in describing their conversion experience, their testimony, will refer to the “call to preach.” Sometimes this is described in very specific terms, words handed down to them which inspire a life of devotion. Pelley, in his Golden Scripts, goes further.
Pelley had mastered the written language to such a degree that grand flashes of spiritual inspiration could be translated instantly into words. I believe that is the difference between Pelley and a great many inspired Christians.
Some great preachers can deliver sermons inspired by Christ. This is most often seen as a good thing. Pelley, on the other hand, was a self-promoter. A charismatic writer having worked in Hollywood film publicity and written for New York publishing houses. Was his break from those carnal galleys complete in the wake of his Seven Minutes awakening? Detractors would say no. He had merely learned the game and switched his focus to duping spiritualists and, later, political malcontents.
I believe Pelley was sincere and that The Golden Scripts were delivered to the public as the pinnacle of his craft… his very personal Soulcraft appropriately enough. Did Holy Spirit influence William Dudley Pelley in his recording of The Golden Scripts? He would have us believe so.
As they stand, these Golden Scripts are presented in the voice of Christ, thus, every word in Red… a New Sermon on the Mount as the Chief often promoted them. Finally, their value is in their reading. Have you read any Golden Scripts? Were you moved by them? For the better?
I believe that’s finally all that matters.
I would like to dedicate this essay to fellow 21st Century Soulcrafter Tom Bennett who I was sorry to hear passed away recently. He was among half-a-dozen or so people active over the last two decades in keeping The Golden Scripts in the daylight.
Below is an article from Valor magazine which I transcribed for Jack Kerlin’s Soulcraft site many years ago. It amounts to one of the most concise and personal accounts I have ever read from Pelley regarding the taking down of these so-called Golden Scripts…
https://soulcraftteachings.org/about.html#clairaudient
CLAIRAUDIENT RECEPTION OF THE GOLDEN SCRIPTS
(From article "Conscientious Mormon Seeks Light on The Golden Scripts," Valor Magazine, July 19, 1952.)
A conscientious Mormon sends Valor magazine a sincere letter of inquiry from a distant State in which he explains as follows:
"I have long been a believer in the visions and experiences of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints; for I fully realize that no man, much less an unlettered youth, could fabricate the Book of Mormon. And now that I have been instructed in Soulcraft teachings, it has been made plain to me how this was accomplished.
"But -- and here is the enigma -- in all of the instructions and teachings of the Higher Mentors, and even Elder Brother Himself, no mention has been made, apparently, of the establishment of a Church to propound and exemplify the instructions coming to you [William Pelley], while in the case of Joseph Smith, the whole program seems to have been based upon the foundation of a church."
Pelley's response:
There is much more to this Mormon's letter but the above is the gist of it. There is a splendidly valorous expression at its end which reads:
"I have suffered much during my long life, physically, mentally, and financially. But if it was all necessary in order to lead me to these truths, then I am satisfied, even happy!"
To all of it, appreciating that similar interrogations may have been from time to time in the hearts or minds of others, Mormons or non-Mormons, The Recorder reprints the main portion of his personal answer....
Peculiarly enough, your letter of inquiry of the 12th comes in just at a time when many correspondents around the country want similar clarification of the points which you propound about The Golden Scripts. In taking time out to answer you somewhat at length, please do not be offended if I use much of what I have to say to you personally as the substance of a current article in Valor. For every person who actually gets to writing such a letter of inquiry as yours, there are probably a hundred who felt the same way but didn't bring themselves to getting the letter off.
Let me preface what I have to say by declaring to you that I have never read the Book of Mormon, just as I have never read Mrs.Eddy's Science and Health or even Madam Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine. Curiously enough, it seems that some purpose was being served by keeping my mind a blank in respect to the tenets of these and other religions and denominations. And yet I seriously ask you to believe that I know, in a general way, all that they contain that is vital from the esoteric standpoint. How this happens I cannot attempt to explain.
As you perhaps have learned, I was reared in the Methodist denomination, in which during my early boyhood my father was a pastor. My early years in this life were all connected with the Protestant Church and I went through the experience of "conversion" in the emotional sense at the profound age of ten. When my father left the pulpit for commercial business, this early religious emotionalism "wore off", shall we say? I held the average layman's insouciance toward orthodoxy up through the years when I was winning my way toward being one of the highest-paid magazine writers in America, including 10 years of motion-picture production in Hollywood.
I indulge in such autobiographical reference to make this point: During this period, which ran to approximately 38 years, instinctively I had disassociated the personality of the Man of Galilee from all orthodox instruction respecting him. I kept an odd sense of personal relationship for which I was ever at a loss to account. Now I realize it must have been a strong sense of prenatal recollection. I never brought myself to believe that He ever made many of the statements attributed to Him in the New Testament. At any rate, I went out to the Orient in the course of my career, primarily for the Methodist Centenary, [sectarian newspaper] on a world survey of Foreign Missions. Before I finished with it, I had side-tracked into Russia during the worst introductory phases of the Bolshevist Revolution. What I saw or learned in Russia, in consequence, opened my eyes to what I believed to be the modern program of the Israelites, and I became openly anti-Semitic in consequence.
This introduced a quandary into my thinking in respect to Christ which contributed in no small part to what occurred in 1928. If you have read Star Guests you know what this was, as it is described in detail in the opening chapters of that volume. [Note: While experimenting with a form of automatic writing in 1928 Pelley had posed the question, "Is there literally such a personage as the Man of Galilee?" At that point Pelley and his female companion were overcome for the first time with what became known as the Master Vibration. This condition accompanied each Golden Script message, the first of which immediately followed.]
Ignoring the origin of the Book of Mormon for the moment, let me say that when the first epiphanies began in my own experience, along with the transcripts that afterwards were collated and published as The Golden Scripts, I accepted them as personal adjurations and enlightenments to me privately, answering many quandaries that had compounded in my own thinking up to that period. You are entirely correct in surmising that The Golden Scripts were addressed to me personally, practically all of them in the first person, and for a long time I had not the slightest notion of making them public. Incidentally, I have by no means done so completely even at the present time. There are other Golden Scripts, running perhaps half again as voluminous as the unabridged edition, which cannot see print until after my demise, for the main reason that they concern my own prior incarnations and I am not after that type of publicity.
However, the general tenor of all the sacred Scripts had it that my feeling of disassociation of Christ from the orthodoxies of the New Testament came from my having been, let's put it, one of the early Church Fathers who had discussed these and similar matters with Him personally when He was in His flesh. On one occasion my antagonism toward the modern Judaists was explained as having arisen from participation in the major events of the original Christian drama.
Many of these "talks", up here in the 20th Century, introduced information about the brevet I had taken upon myself to help complete the Dispensational work that had begun so long ago with the nativity in Bethlehem, and gradually brought me to realize that I must have a responsibility not to keep the general gist of the preachments secret. Where a given Script, or transcript of clairaudient conversation, befitted society generally, and contained the same illuminations and inspirations applicable to others that it had for me, I began, ON EXPRESS ORDERS, to alter the personal pronouns from the singular to the plural, to make certain grammatical changes with the Great Mentor, we might put, it standing by, and to prepare them generally for public release and consumption. Out of about 1,200 printed pages of such transcript, not unlike stenographic report of any legal procedure, I gradually passed 844 pages into public print. This is the volume of which $50,000 worth of books have been circulated to the public this year absolutely free of cost, the funds having been provided me on which to accomplish it. So much for general background, enabling me to treat of the points raised in your letter.
I was specifically adjured, I might interpolate at this point, that the public reaction to my making the sacred conversations of common knowledge would be persecution of the vilest order, leave me a marked man for the balance of my days, bring about a 7.5 year prison sentence, destroy my secular writing revenue completely, and make me in turn what I had been originally, another Galilean with all Semitic animosities set against me. Nevertheless, the most minute descriptions as to how the whole program would come out were afforded me, and at the time of the Master's physical return, my vindication would come. All modern minority plans for majority subjugations were ultimately to come to naught, and with the ultimate smashing of United Nations and its booting out of America, events would so mature as to bring in a wonderful Golden Time that would be the objective of the Christian Dispensation from its commencement. This philosophy, so aptly confirming by event, became the cornerstone of all my thinking and performing. Indeed, I have never had a prognostication made me from what I term this Sacred Source, that hasn't matured on the pinpoint.
Furthermore, I might add that persons, skeptical or otherwise, who have happened to be present at some of these recordings, have found themselves unable to move a muscle of their physical bodies during the transcribing. All of it, you understand, was unsolicited by me in this life consciously. It just happened involuntarily insofar as I was concerned. Which brings us to the controversial subject of "His" true Church.
Let me say what I have to say in this wise---The Great Teacher, for I think of Him as strictly that, has never at any time or in any terms, ever uttered one syllable to me implying that He had any "church" excepting the Truth exercising in men's hearts universally. I do recall at one time when I had passed a facetious remark about the Pope of Rome, He interposed quickly and vehemently, "Nevertheless, he is my servant for those who must approach Truth through the spectacles of ritual."
Never in 23 years experience with this sacred communication has He ever uttered a single criticism of any Faith, Denomination, Cult, or Doctrine, no matter how antagonistic it might be to the general agenda of principles set forth in the Golden Speakings. [Golden Scripts] I might also add specifically, since you have mentioned it, that no reference has ever been made to the Mormon Church, either for or against it, but His general philosophy and angle seems to be that all forms of spiritual observance befit the peculiar needs of the communicants, thus rationalizing their existence. But what was being aimed at in my own illumination was the clarification of His original doctrine, that the error that has crept into latter-day orthodoxy might be reasonably corrected.
That reincarnation of the personal soul-spirit into mortality again and again was a fact, was early impressed upon me. Indeed, I have passages which would seem to attest that this was one of the main tenets He broadcast in Palestine in the flesh, but that the early ecclesiastics, of their own volitions, made an allegorical interpretation of it which became mystically almost without meaning. "But," said He on many occasions, "remember not to tell men truths with too great suddenness, lest they turn and rend you."
Conscientiously I went through over 200 transcripts of the Sacred Conversations and culled out, almost under specific guidance, those which were feasible to release to the general public. I did this with an utterly virgin mind, I say, respecting such works as the Book of Mormon, Science and Health, or The Secret Doctrine. Yet indications keep mounting that the fundamental truths in all these books are in the Sacred Conversations somewhere. Mormonism may be "His Church" and it may not. I have no means of knowing because He has never mentioned it. But neither has he passed comment on the truth or falseness of any other creed. One thing I did understand, was that I was under no obligation to establish any creed, denomination, or cult in consequence of my own enlightenments. I was simply to release what He obviously had uttered to the great cross-section of the public and let it go at that. I gathered that in the fullness of time He had His own plans for its formal utility.
You ask about true copies of His original speakings being on deposit in the Vatican. I cannot say, one way or another, because I do not know, but there are implications aplenty that everything recorded about His Palestinian ministry of today is strictly hearsay, edited and re-edited so many times as to have lost all semblance of its pristine essence.
One thing I might mention, He has never once made mention of any such place as Hell and any condition of Eternal Torment. All is of Light and Instruction. All souls come to salvation in the end by means of the Rebirth (on earth) which truly was the substance of His converse with Nicodemus, and the benefits of Ultimate Experience.
To sum it up, my dear friend, I make no claims whatsoever about The Golden Scripts. I submit them on their merits, for what they contain that is consistent and inspiring. They were originally dictated to me and I shared them. I am trying to start no church, religion, denomination or cult.
People the land across are finding a new basis of regenerated faith in them, and that, I believe, is why they were given to me. My early years as a professional writer were merely technical preparations for doing the expository work that now falls to me. Because they are strictly non-sectarian, they can appeal to the communicants of any Faith.
If you are a good Mormon, continue to be a good Mormon. If you are a professing Catholic or Protestant, continue so to profess. If Christian Science or Theosophy befit your spiritual requirements, go to those for them. The Golden Scripts are merely master commentaries on all of them — and none.
This is as far as I can go in responding to your letter of query about them. Those which can only be published post-mortally, outline precisely what I'm supposed to do to aid in inducting the Golden Times I mention so frequently in Valor, and a hundred years from today it may be seen that whatever I have done had a mighty serious motivation, even though from the near-angle of the present, many phases have seemed futile. I think in the end it will be seen that nothing was futile nor out of place.
Lastly, the fact that the way was opened to me to publish and give away $50,000 worth of these total collations has an undeniable significance.
My best personal wishes go out to you, and may you continue to find the same consolation and inspiration in The Scripts that I have found as an individual.
Fraternally, The Recorder.
Thank you Vance for writing and giving us this piece. Beautifully and accurately written.
Thank you for paying tribute to Tom Bennett for all his grand efforts in sharing the William Dudley Pelley legacy and the Word. Myself, as one who found the Pelley and Soulcraft literature "by chance" or more so by "guided fate", my life has been enriched with greater knowledge and understanding since.
I am grateful for the all the literature penned by Mr Pelley and for having made connections with people like Tom and yourself. Thank you!