A new CDAMM article by Alastair Lockhart (University of Cambridge) on Mabel Barltrop (aka Octavia) has recently been published. Here's an excerpt:
Mabel Barltrop (1866–1934, née Andrews) was a British mystic and the founder of an apocalyptic and millenarian religious community called the Panacea Society, based in Bedford, United Kingdom. She had been brought up as a member of the Church of England and she became a follower of the nineteenth-century English prophet Joanna Southcott (1750–1814) as an adult. The Society’s members recognised Barltrop as the eighth in a line of Southcottian prophets, and she adopted the name ‘Octavia’ (from the Latin octavus, ‘eighth’) in her religious activities (for convenience, Barltrop is referred to by her chosen name, Octavia, throughout this article though it was only taken on in 1919). Ultimately, the Society came to regard Octavia as Southcott’s biological and transcendental daughter, as the child of the “woman clothed with the sun” referred to by the book of Revelation (chapter 12), and as a female messiah counterpart to Jesus Christ.
Octavia’s developed theology drew on her Anglican background and the teachings of Southcott, and she took inspiration from the writings of the seventeenth-century mystic Jane Lead (1624–1704) and other writers and prophets. She was also an interpreter of the Bible and Anglican theology, and an adept of the spiritualist practice of automatic writing. At the core of her religious teaching was the idea that Jesus Christ and God the Father had completed the salvation of human souls, and that she as female messiah with God the Mother would complete the salvation of human bodies, achieving overall salvation for her followers. Anticipating the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the initiation of a worldwide millennium of divine rule through the British Empire, Octavia led her community in worship services modelled after Church of England practice, received daily communications from the divine by automatic writing, directed a campaign to have Joanna Southcott recognised by the bishops of the Church of England, and blessed pieces of linen that were distributed by post to provide healing. When Octavia died in 1934, the members in Bedford initially anticipated her immediate return to life but arranged her burial a week later when she failed to do so.
