Your editor writes in the TRIBUTE: “ Through the research I did for this tribute it became evident that Carey Williams (Caren Elin) not only functioned as an excellent editor and research assistant, but she was also Anita’s friend through thick and thin, until the very end of Anita’s long and productive life.”
Betty Bland, former National President of the Theosophical Society in America writes in the same TRIBUTE: ” I, personally, am forever indebted to the author and her most capable research assistant Carey Williams (AKA Caren Elin) for this entire document, footnotes, endnotes, references, and all.”
Caren (left) and Anita, 1986, Bar Harbor Maine
Dara Eklund writes in the TRIBUTE: “During these busy years of re-issues, Caren arranged to have Anita transferred to a very lovely nursing home in Santa Barbara, where she could help see to her proper care.”
The profound bond between the two women lasted for many years. Caren affectionately took care of Anita when the time had come she needed full support. When at one point Caren had fallen ill however, Anita would also send all her positive thoughts to her friend, wishing her a full recovery, as is shown in the following touching letter to Caren:
Don't wish to tire you, so have not phoned. Keep in touch with Dara and find out how you are. Be assured my loving thoughts are with you constantly
I recall that once before you had a seeming setback, and came through it all with flying colors
We have so much work to do together, especially with the HPB biography’s promotion
'Keep on keeping on,' the saying goes. Nothing has stopped us yet and never will
If we keep the goal in mind
With my abiding love, Anita
Anita Atkins is a woman whose story deserves to be retold and savored.
Having died in 2000, she is no longer Anita Atkins yet lives on in the physical world through the five books that she co-wrote between 1961 and 1993.
But what’s the big deal, you say? Let’s try to explain this.
• Anita’s formal education ended with high school graduation. Thereafter, she was self-taught.
• Anita’s first book came out when she was 46, the last when she was 78.
• In her latter years, Anita worked and wrote while dealing with the nervous system effects of Parkinson’s
disease.
• Anita never married. But, she was the Mother of Timeless books.
• She devoted her life to writing, teaching, lecturing and spreading the Truth as she understood it.
• At the age of sixteen, Anita's heart was pierced by a simple proclamation which had been made 25 years
before she was born.
• In response, she began compiling what great thinkers, writers, artists, psychologists, composers and
philosophers thought on two important subjects.
• Anita supported herself by working at a five-and-ten-cents store, the Eastern News Distribution
Company, and by managing the New York United Lodge until her retirement.
• As an author, Anita never spent the royalties from her books on herself, but used that money to donate
her books to libraries worldwide.
• Outwardly, Anita was extremely shy, self-effacing, and wrote under a pseudonym about extraordinary
ideas and amazing people.
• Anita, loved Kadinsky and Nicholas Roerich. She loved every flower and tree and knew them all by
name and every leaf in Central Park, NYC; she knew from which tree it came. She loved all the classical
composers, transcendentalist writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller and Henri David
Thoreau. She had a Great “ affinity” to Edward Dwight Walker, who wrote the first book on
reincarnation entitled Reincarnation A Study of Forgotten Truth, published in 1888.
• Anita lived a humble and frugal life. The only extravagant clothes were her full length gowns that all
female Sunday might lecturers wore and on White Lotus Day, ULT, and Crosby Day commemorations.
• The DAISY would symbolize Anita’s inner beauty and simplicity
The Rest of Anita's Story
Anita Atkins was born on December 12, 1915, and grew up in the Grand Concourse, Bronx, New York. Though both her parents were committed Theosophists, it took until her teenage years before Atkins attended her own first meeting. Thereafter despite her extreme shyness, Miss Atkins went to every possible United Lodge of Theosophy meeting.
Anita became devoted to Theosophy and read every word that Helena P. Blavatsky published, not once but many times. (15,000 - 20,000 pages) THE keynote that sounded as a call for Anita to serve the worldwide Theosophical Movement was HPB's message to the fourth annual (1890) American Convention at the Palmer House Hotel, Chicago, Illinois, in which HPB stated:
“The Ethics of Theosophy are more important than any divulgement of psychic laws and facts. The latter relate wholly to the material and evanescent part of the septenary man, but the Ethics sink into and take hold of the real man the reincarnating Ego. We are outwardly creatures of but a day; within we are eternal. Learn, then, well the doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation, and teach, practice, promulgate that system of life and thought, which alone can save the coming races. Do not work merely for the Theosophical Society, but through it for Humanity.”
Anita's heart was “pierced” thereby so that at the age of sixteen she began compiling what thinkers the world around had to say throughout history on the subject of death and reincarnation. What started as an appendix to a publication for the Theosophical Society grew into a volume of its own.
A Theosophist in Los Angeles advised Anita to select a pen name and have her work published as a separate book by a New York publishing house. Anita thus became Sylvia or S. L. Cranston, for all the books she published.
Anita's first three books were compiled and edited with co-author Joseph Head: Reincarnation: An East-West Anthology (1961), Reincarnation in World Thought (1967), and Reincarnation: The Phoenix FireMystery (1977). Her fourth was written in collaboration with Carey Williams: Reincarnation: A New Horizon in Science, Religion and Society (1984).
Books by Sylvia Cranston ought to be within hand reach at all times, even here …
Atkins's last book became a tribute: HPB: The Extraordinary Life and Influence of Helena Blavatsky,Founder of the Modern Theosophical Movement when published in 1993. Anita wrote this last volume with the assistance of Carey Williams while suffering with Parkinson’s disease.
Anita Atkins aka S. L. Cranston died on June 20, 2000. All her Cranston books remain in print today in many languages around the world.
Anita Atkins's lifelong wish was that the ideas of Theosophy be used to benefit humanity through gentle acts of service. Clearly, Sylvia Cranston believed that spreading knowledge and understanding of Karma and Reincarnation are of keen importance in growing, loving and serving humanity.
Sources: Rocky Mountain Astrologer and Carey Williams