The writer behind the pen name
Specialist researcher Jean Overton Fuller identified Challoner as Janet Melanie Ailsa Mills through correspondence with Barry Thompson. A later publisher’s account connects the two writing careers, listing novels such as The Way Triumphant and Marsh Fires alongside esoteric works including The Wheel of Rebirth. Records give different birth years, 1894 and 1895; that disagreement remains unresolved here.
Mills’s literary life intersected with the circle around composer and writer Cyril Scott. She shared a home near Rye with his wife, the novelist Rose Allatini, during the Second World War. Family recollections and later publisher correspondence also describe their trips to Switzerland, where Mills painted while Allatini wrote. Mills’s collaborations extended to books with P. G. Bowen and Roland Northover, giving her a working literary career beyond a single visionary volume.
Spiritual forces given voices and pictures
The 1933 Routledge Watchers of the Seven Spheres announces eight colour plates and an introduction by the author of The Initiate, now identified as Scott. Its images and poetry attempt to represent devas understood as forces within nature, music and collective life. The introduction acknowledges that ordinary pictures cannot adequately depict the forms it supposes them to have. The work later appeared as Regents of the Seven Spheres, the title used on this catalogue’s cover.
The Listeners section begins with a master addressing pupils; later figures include the Earth Spirit, Divine Musician and Spirit of Lightning. Named voices give cosmic functions a personal presence, while colour and rhythm offer different ways of expressing them. The introduction also allows enjoyment as poetry without acceptance of its spiritual claims. These are Mills’s literary and religious interpretations, rather than independently verified observations of unseen beings.
