Railroad Passenger Car: An Illustrated History of the First Hundred Years, with Accounts by ... Book

This is a classic book in the esoteric tradition by one of the great esotericists of the 19th century. Schure was an early influence on Rudolf Steiner, who met and spoke with him just prior to making the decision to accept the leadership of the German Theosophical Society in 1904. The book thus has great value as a historical document. As a factually accurate account of the lives of the "great initiates," it has less value. It is filled with inaccuracies, only one of which I will point out here. Schure describes the Great Pyramid of Giza as an initiation temple and describes, in detail, how initiation rituals were conducted there. His accounts are at odds with the physical structure of the pyramid as revealed by contemporary archaeology and, speaking from personal experience as one who has visited the Great Pyramid and walked inside, I find very little in his account that is plausible. It may be that his account, written in 1889, could have been taken seriously by his contemporaries, but archaeological work since that time has demonstrated its many shortcomings. Read this as a historical document with great importance for the history of Western esotericism, but not as a factual work.