‘Tis the Set of the Soul

One ship sails east and another west,

With the very same winds that blow;

‘Tis the set of the sails, and not the gales

That tells them the way to go.

Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate,

As we voyage along through life,

‘Tis the set of a soul that decides the goal

And not the calm or the strife.[1]

---

[1] Ella Wheeler was born in 1850 on a farm in rural Johnstown, Wisconsin, the youngest of four children. The family soon moved to north of Madison. She started writing poetry at an early age, and was well known as a poet in her own state by the time she graduated from high school. When about 28 years of age, she married Robert Wilcox. They had one child, a son, who died shortly after birth. Not long after their marriage, they both became interested in Theosophy. Early in their married life, the couple promised each other that whoever went first through death would return and communicate with the other. Robert Wilcox died in 1916, after over thirty years of marriage. She was overcome with grief, which became ever more intense as week after week went without any message from him. She went to California to see Max Heindel, confused and seeking help in her sorrow. She describes the meeting:

In talking with Max Heindel, the leader of the Rosicrucian Philosophy in California, he made very clear to me the effect of intense grief. Mr. Heindel assured me that I would come in touch with the spirit of my husband when I learned to control my sorrow. I replied that it seemed strange to me that an omnipotent God could not send a flash of his light into a suffering soul to bring its conviction when most needed. Did you ever stand beside a clear pool of water, asked Mr. Heindel, and see the trees and skies repeated therein? And did you ever cast a stone into that pool and see it clouded and turmoiled, so it gave no reflection? Yet the skies and trees were waiting above to be reflected when the waters grew calm. So God and your husband’s spirit wait to show themselves to you when the turbulence of sorrow is quieted.

Several months later, she composed a little mantra which she said over and over: I am the living witness: The dead live: And they speak through us and to us: And I am the voice that gives this glorious truth to the suffering world: I am ready, God: I am ready, Christ: I am ready, Robert. 

Wilcox made efforts to teach occult things to the world during World War I years:

As we think, act, and live here today, we built the structures of our homes in spirit realms after we leave earth, and we build karma for future lives, thousands of years to come, on this earth or other planets. Life will assume new dignity, and labor new interest for us, when we come to the knowledge that death is but a continuation of life and labor, in higher planes.

Such views were received for the most part with scorn and disbelief by the public.

A popular rather than a literary poet, her poems express sentiments of cheer and optimism in plainly written, rhyming verse. Her world view is expressed in the title of her poem Whatever Is—Is Best.  (Source: Wikipedia)