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through Tibet, bypassing the capital, and going straight to Sikkim to Bailey’s home. Let the English spy deal with them.
When they i nally arrived in Sikkim in mid-May, Lt. Colonel Bailey welcomed the exhausted travelers into his residence, acting as if nothing had happened. He even hosted them for a while, of ering hot baths and good foods. It took the experienced operative only a brief chat with the painter to i gure out that Roerich was not a Bolshevik but simply a dangerous eccentric. 34 Yet, as a professional spy, he had no remorse about what he had done to Roerich and his companions. Better to be on the safe side.
Figure 8.5 In “friendly” hands: English spy Lt. Colonel F. M. Bailey, Political Of-i cer in Sikkim, hosts his unsuspecting opponent Nicholas Roerich. Let to right, sitting: Mrs. F. M. Bailey, Nicholas Roerich, Helena Roerich; standing: Nikolai Kordashevsky, George Roerich; Konstantin Riabinin, name not recorded, F. M.
Bailey. Bailey residence, Gangtok, Sikkim, May 24–25, 1928.
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At er parting with the hospitable Bailey, the Roerich party was nearing the end of its journey. h e long Asian odyssey, which cost $97,000 and took the Roeriches all over Eurasia, was i nally over. h e Shambhala war the painter wanted to unleash in Inner Asia had fallen through miserably. So had his plan to bring all Tibetan Buddhists into the Sacred Union of the East. But the couple did not want to simply say good-bye to their comrades and go their separate ways. h e grand magic drama that had started with the miraculous manifestation of the Chintamani stone required at least a magic ending. And the Roeriches provided it.
h e painter suddenly announced to his friends that he, along with Helena and George, would leave the rest in order to proceed straight to the forbidden Shambhala kingdom: the Great White Brotherhood was calling them. Exclaiming “It is nice to believe in the fairy tale of life,”
the Roeriches parted with their comrades. 35 Dr. Riabinin sadly watched how the three riders galloped away and soon blended in with the horizon, lowering the curtain of mystery behind them: “We Europeans who accompanied Nicholas and Helena must say good-bye to them, for we are not supposed to know their future path. Will the messenger of Shambhala accompany them?” 36
Botanical Expedition with an Occult Spin, 1935
h e major result of the Roeriches’ mission to Inner Asia was their complete disillusionment with oi cial Tibetan Buddhism. h e painter and his wife became equally frustrated about the Bolsheviks, who did not wholeheartedly support their Great Plan, so they decided to delete the Reds from their lives as well. h eir otherworldly teacher shared these frustrations, and in his usual cryptic manner stated that in the future city of knowledge there would be nothing red, not even red l owers.
Only blue, white, and violet would remain. Trying to close this page of his life, the painter had all mention of the Bolsheviks, including his Moscow visit, purged from further editions of his books.
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Figure 8.6 Nicholas Roerich’s Master Building, intended to become a spiritual beacon for humankind. It featured brickwork that gradually shit ed from dark to light as the building rose.
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h e failures they experienced only hardened the couple’s determination not to give up on their dream: “Blessed obstacles, through you we grow.” 37 By that time, the Roeriches were so i rmly entangled in their vi-sionary world controlled by Master Morya that there was simply no way back. Roerich’s books, and especially Helena’s spiritual diaries, clearly showed that the two spiritual seekers were not opportunistic actors. h e
couple came to truly believe in their own theater of magic, becoming totally convinced they had been chosen by hidden masters of the Great White Brotherhood to speed up human spiritual evolution. h e symbol of this grand mission became a skyscraper that Louis Horch, the Roerich’s major donor, built in 1929 to accommodate spiritual and artistic projects of the painter. Located at 310 Riverside Drive in Manhattan, this twenty-four-story Master Building (a reference to Master Morya) was to become a cultural and intellectual beacon for humankind.
What the Shambhala warriors needed now was a new sponsor to back up their Great Plan. h
e United States became their natural choice, and the ocean of l attery that the Roeriches earlier showered on the Bolsheviks was now redirected toward America and particular politicians: President Herbert Hoover, the inl uential Republican senator from Idaho William Borah, and later President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
In the pages of Nicholas Roerich’s books published at er 1929, Mongol and Kalmyk nomads share legends about the “generous Giant,” the “one who feeds people”—references to Hoover’s American Relief Association, which fought famine in Soviet Russia in 1921–22. h e most ridiculous statement was a l attering remark addressed to Borah: “A letter from him is considered a good passport everywhere. Sometimes in Mongolia, or in the Altai, or in Chinese Turkestan you can hear a strange pronuncia-tion of his name: ‘Boria is a powerful man.’” “h is is so precious to hear,”
added Roerich without a hint of irony: the sweeter the talk the better. 38
h e biggest coup was making friends with Henry Wallace, a rising politician from Iowa, the Secretary of Agriculture and later Vice President in the FDR administration. Wallace came to the political spotlight during the Great Depression, when millions of unemployed workers, 206
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bankrupt farmers, and the majority of intellectuals came to the i rm conclusion that the days of capitalism were over and that the future belonged, if not to communism, then dei nitely to a greater welfare state that would take care of people and tame unruly proi teers. Like many on the FDR team, the Iowa politician became disgusted with the free market going wild. Yet unlike his comrades, Wallace looked beyond social and economic change, contemplating a spiritual transforma-tion of the human being. A deeply religious man, he attributed many social evils to the materialism of Western civilization. h us he joined the growing tribe of Caucasian people who searched for redemption in Native American, Oriental, and Western esoteric traditions. h is quest drew him to Indian shamans and h eosophy, and led him to explore the inl uence of stars on Iowa cereal crops. In the early 1930s, Wallace was still looking for his spiritual niche. h e plant physiologist Borodin, who had taken Roerich’s project of the Sacred Union of the East so close to his heart, helped the seeker i nd the “correct” path. Sharing with Wallace a common interest in drought-resistant plants, Uncle Boris had courted the future Secretary of Agriculture since the end of the 1920s.
Hearing of Wallace’s spiritual side, Borodin revealed that in New York City there lived a man who would be able to quench his spiritual thirst.
h
us, Wallace was drawn into Roerich’s circle.
h e painter immediately saw that the highly positioned seeker could be very useful for his Great Plan and began to gently cultivate this valuable contact. Massaging Wallace’s ego, Roerich prophesized that he was destined to become the next president. Soon Wallace was admitted into the inner circle, receiving a ring and the esoteric name Galahad—a reference to the legend that Galahad, along with Parsifal, took the Holy Grail to the Orient. Fascinated with Roerich’s prophecies and stories about travels to Buddhist areas, Wallace withdrew from the mainstream h eosophical Society and took up the Roeriches’ cause. When Wallace became Secretary of Agriculture, the couple was eventually able to reach out to FDR, who already knew about the painter and his Master Building through his mother, Sara, a woman with esoteric leanings.
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Soon Helena Roerich corresponded directly with the president, sending FDR her “i ery messages” peppered with advice about domestic and international politics. 39 In February 1935, she i nally felt comfortable enough to reveal to the chief executive the details of the Great Plan, hinting that the United States might help this noble project: “h us, the
time for reconstruction in the East has come, and let us have friends of the Orient in America. h e Union of Asian peoples is envisioned. h e
unii cation of the tribes and nationalities will proceed gradually. h ey will have their own federation. Mongolia, China, and the Kalmyk will counterbalance Japan. Mr. President, in this project of unii cation we need your good will.” 40
Meanwhile, rubbing shoulders with Wallace, Roerich suddenly saw an opportunity to use this friendship for his occult geopolitics. In the wake of the horrible drought that hit the Central Plains, the Department of Agriculture started looking for drought-resistant grasses and cereals, sending out its people to various parts of the globe, including Central and Inner Asia. When Roerich found out about it, he was quick to of er himself as an expert on Asian plant life. According to the painter’s occult calendar, it was a good time for him to step out of the shadows and attempt to launch again the Sacred Union of the East: on December 17, 1933, the thirteenth Dalai Lama died. h is “happy news,” surmised the painter, would surely trigger a chain of events. To his circle of the elect he announced, “Now we have reached the future!” 41
By the end of December Wallace was already in Roosevelt’s oi ce, trying to sell his boss on the idea of an Asian botanical expedition that would include Roerich and his son George. h e president, who would soon take a personal interest in Roerich’s cause, liked the project and gave his go-ahead. At the same time, the Secretary of Agriculture indirectly tried to prepare FDR for something bigger than simply a botanical venture, vaguely hinting that the political situation in Asia was always quite intriguing because of various ancient prophecies and legends. At the last moment, Wallace’s worried subordinates convinced their boss to attach two actual plant scientists to the expedition. h e Roeriches did 208
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