Meredith Starr

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Meredith Starr with Meher Baba

Roland Meredith Starr (December 29, 1890 - December 13, 1971), whose birth name was Herbert Close, was born in Prestbury House, Hampton, at Richmond in the County of Middlesex, England to well-to-do land owning parents ("landed proprietors") William Brooks Close and Mary Baker Brooks Close. When Starr was one year old his parents separated and he was raised by his mother. He received his education at Winchester College in Hampshire. Starr was a psychologist, homeopath, occultist and an editorial writer. He was also the principle player in bringing the Indian guru Meher Baba to the west (England and the United States) for the first time in the start of the 1930s, although he himself did not remain a follower of Meher Baba's for very long.

In the early 20th century, Starr wrote for The Occult Review, an illustrated monthly magazine containing articles & correspondence by many notable occultists of the day, including Aleister Crowley, Arthur Edward Waite, W.L. Wilmhurst, Franz Hartmann, Florence Farr, and Herbert Stanley Redgrove. He probably changed his name to Meredith Starr when he was twenty in relation to his work as a reviewer and contributor for The Occult Review. He also wrote for Aleister Crowley's publication The Equinox, publishing Memory of Love (under the name "Herbert Close"), VII, 291 - Vol 7, in 1911.

Meredith Starr met Meher Baba in Toka, India on June 30, 1928. In 1931 Starr established a retreat center at East Challacombe, North Devon, where he invited Meher Baba to come and meet westerners. It was at the Devon retreat that many of Meher Baba's lasting followers from Europe and the United States first met Baba. Meredith was famously lacking in a sense of humor and had a particular sense of how spiritual conduct should be, thus enforcing strong codes of serious contemplative conduct that made even Meher Baba uncomfortable. Yet he is considered to have played a central role in introducing Meher Baba to the western world.

Later, Starr grew irritated with Meher Baba, writing him a letter commanding, "Give me either the 400 pounds you owe me or illumination; otherwise, I will leave you and expose you as a fraud!" He then did leave Meher Baba.

He was married first to Lady Mary Stamford and then to Margarget Starr (or Margarita Alison Starr), to whom he was married in London in 1917. He is buried in Municipal Cemetery, Krikley, Suffolk. He was survived by two children, Gordon Mettreyya and Meredith John Grey.

MEMORY OF LOVE

O DREAD Desire of Love! O lips and eyes!

O image of the love that never dies,

But, fed by furtive fire, rages most

When Hope and Faith have been for ever lost!

O oft-kissed lips and soul-remembered eyes,

O stricken heart -- the old love never dies!

O Passion of dead lips that used to cling

To warm red living ones that breathed no pain!

O Passion of dead hours that daily bring

To life some phantom pale that died in vain! ...

Some echo tuned to Memory's dying strain,

Some witness of the immemorial spring!

— Meredith Starr (The Equinox)