The Franklin Merrell-Wolff Fellowship

This file contains some correspondence between Franklin Wolff and John Flinn, who served two stints as Wolff’s companion beginning in 1978. (6 pages)

Thirty-three years after his 1936 Realizations, Wolff reassesses the significance of these events; in this letter, with respect to the Tri-Kaya and the three fundamental zones or states known as “Sangsara,” “Nirvana” and “Paranirvana” (or “Paranishpanna”). See the audio recording, “The Meaning of Redemption,” for a discussion of this letter. (5 pages)

This letter to an unknown correspondent was published in the Bulletin of the Assembly of Man 6 (April 1961).

This card is from Sylvia and her husband Larry (Sylvia was Peter and Ann Elizabeth Geshell's daughter). It is not dated, but likely from some time in the 1980s.

This file contains three letters from Franklin Wolff to his wife Sherifa from Michigan Bluff, a small gold-mining town in northern California. There should be many more letters here from and about this period of time in Wolff’s life. Wolff was trying to make ends meet during the Great Depression by prospecting for gold, which he did for a period of three years while living in a small, rented cabin. A number of his and Sherifa’s students also spent time there, including Murray Gregg, Lillian and Clyde Reid, Kathryn Turner, and Jim and Helen Briggs.

This file contains some letters from Franklin Wolff to Sherifa (his first wife) from their newly purchased ranch outside of Lone Pine, Calif. They had named the property “The Assembly of Man Ranch” after the theosophical organization that they had founded in 1928. For the most part, these letters detail Wolff’s work during the 1940s at the ranch, which included planting crops and raising animals. (15 pages)

This file contains some letters between Franklin Wolff and his first wife, Sherifa. They were written at a time when both were living at the Temple of People in Halcyon, Calif. (1909-1922), and specifically, at a time when Sherifa was convalescing at a sanatorium. Those written by Sherifa are in longhand, and at least one is barely legible. A typed letter from Franklin is also found here, in which he recites a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. (22 pages)

Peter Geshell was a close friend of James Briggs (Wolff’s stepson), whom he had met when the two were students at the Colorado School of Mines. Pete and his wife would become longtime students of Franklin Wolff, and in retirement built a home on Wolff's Lone Pine ranch.

Although not part of Wolff's correspondence, the note and poem here were written in celebration of the life and work of Franklin Merrell-Wolff shortly after his death on October 4, 1985. (3 pages)

Helen Mackett Briggs was married to Wolff’s stepson, James Briggs (Sherifa was his mother). The Wolff family’s most faithful correspondent, Helen began sending letters to Franklin and Sherifa in the 1940s, while she and Jim lived in Alaska (unfortunately, these are not included here). The seventy-eight letters in the file here begin just after Wolff and his second wife (Gertrude) have settled in Lone Pine, Calif., and span a period from 1961 to 1981.