T. Lobsang Rampa and Other Characters of Questionable Faith is available as a hardback book, printed lithographically, sewn, with silk ribbon marker, printed boards, and head and tailbands. Jacket. 274 pps.

 

Publication 14th August 2025

 

First Tartarus Press hardback limited to 300 signed copies.

ISBN 978-1-912586-67-7

£45.00 inc p&p

 

Paperback: £17.95

 

Ebook: £7.99

(Please note that the ebook will be sent manually, so there may be a short delay in receiving it.)

alternatively, buy the paperback from Amazon UK and Amazon.com

 

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T. Lobsang Rampa

And Other Characters of Questionable Faith

by

R.B. Russell

 

T. Lobsang Rampa’s autobiography, The Third Eye was an international bestseller in 1956, but the author had to face some awkward questions from critics. There were two possibilities; either he really was a Tibetan lama whose third eye had been physically opened (and who could reveal secrets of levitation, invisibility, gilded extraterrestrials, giant temple cats, etc), or he was really the eccentric son of a plumber from Plympton in Devon.

 

Rampa would explain himself by discussing transmigration, and over the next quarter of a century (and in another eighteen books) he would reveal the secrets of the human aura, astral travel, UFOs, life on Venus, and the hollow Earth (and hollow Moon), among many other alternative, New Age ideas. For Rampa, there was no wild, left-field belief that was not true.

 

R.B. Russell has written the first definitive biography of Rampa (also known as Cyril Henry Hoskin). The identity of Rampa may have been conclusively debunked by anybody who knew anything about Tibet, Buddhism, or basic scientific principles, but he would always claim that everything he wrote was true, and until his death in 1980 he doesn’t ever seem to have come out of character.

 

Russell’s biography of Rampa is accompanied in this volume by three further studies of alternative belief systems that have fascinated him over the years.

 

Following the biography of Rampa, Russell writes about the Millenarian church, the Brotherhood of the Cross and Star, who believed their leader was Christ and immortal, and that the world would end in 2000. (Spoiler alert: we are still here, and nobody has seen the leader for several years.)

 

A further essay is a brief look at one of the Church of Scientology’s techniques for recruiting members, the Oxford Capacity Analysis test. Russell argues that the test is based on a series of small, apparently innocuous lies, but he shows that they are indicative of Scientology’s complete disregard for honesty or integrity.

 

The final essay looks at the Temple of Psychic Youth, the knowing attempt by Genesis P-Orridge to create a modern cult. Was it exploitative and manipulative, or simply an ironic experiment? And how did it backfire when the 1980s tabloids created the Satanic Panic?

 

The painting on the boards of this book is by Les Edwards. It was first published on the cover of As It Was!, T. Lobsang Rampa, Corgi, 1976.

 

Review:

'The three chapters on the Brotherhood, the Scientologists and TOPY offer compelling glimpses into the lives of both the manipulators and the manipulated, exploring some of the ways some folks allow themselves to be subsumed inside another's ego, but, it's the Rampa biography that is the gem here. . .  a superbly readable glimpse into the life of a man who must surely be considered alongside the greatest of British eccentrics.' Ian Holloway, Wyrd Britain