THE THEOSOPHICAL

MOVEMENT

1875 -1950

THE CUNNINGHAM PRESS

Los ANGELES 32, CALIFORNIA

COPYRIGHT, 1951

BY THE CUNNINGHAM PRESS

All Rights Reserved

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

“Night before last I was shown a bird’s eye view of the theosophical societies. I saw a few earnest reliable theosophists in a death struggle with the world in general and with other—nominal and ambitious theosophists. The former are greater in number than you may think, and they prevailed—as you in America will prevail, if you only remain staunch to the Master’s programme and true to yourselves.”

                                                                                    —H. P. B., 1888

PREFACE

    IN 1925, just fifty years after the founding of the Theosophical Society in New York, the first accurate and thorough history of the Theosophical Movement was published by E. P. Dutton and Company. This volume, entitled The Theosophical Movement, 1875-1925, a History and a Survey, was com piled by the editors of Theosophy, a monthly journal devoted to the original objects of the Theosophical Movement. It provided theosophical students and others interested in the subject with a detailed and documented study of the lifework of H. P. Blavatsky and other leading figures of the Theosophical Movement. Encompassed in the 700 pages of the book were careful accounts of all the major events of Theosophical history, with enough evidence assembled for every reader to form his own conclusions regarding matters of controversy; or at least, sufficient to place serious inquirers well along on the path of individual investigation.

    During the years since publication of The Theosophical Movement, no material errors, either of fact or of interpretation, have ben disclosed, although, due to the various claims of “successorship” and ‘spiritual leadership” that have been maintained by some of the Theosophical organizations, the appearance of the book was the occasion for discomfort and complaint in some quarters. Actually, the volume was published in the face of a threatened libel suit, but no action was brought, doubtless for the reason that the statements made are all supported by facts.

    The present book is a continuance of the earlier work published in 1925. Since that time there have been many developments in the Theosophical area. “Leaders” have died, and other personalities have taken their places. The vicissitudes of the various Theosophical Societies are now of less concern to the inquirer, and the philosophy itself, in the form of the original teachings, is gradually replacing organizational activities and disputes as the focus of Theosophic interest. Even the enemies of the Theosophical Movement are showing

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by their methods of attack that its real vitality lies in the life and work of H. P. Blavatsky. Other figures of the early days of the Movement are increasingly forgotten, but the power and influence of H.P.B. grows with the years, as students of Theosophy, regardless of organization, seek the inspiration of her undiluted teachings. Thus, pseudo-Theosophy is more easily recognized, and theosophical “sects” find it more difficult to maintain a distinctive identity. The course of these developments in the Theosophical Movement since 1925 gives occasion for the new material in this book, as well as for the consolidation of the treatment of earlier events. The 1925 volume will remain as the more detailed work of reference on the initial cycle of Theosophical history, its existence making possible the publication of another book, briefer in some respects, and covering the later phases of the Movement to 1950.

    For those who find in this book their first contact with Theosophy, something may be said on the subject of “authority.” It will soon become evident to such readers that the study of Theosophy is an undertaking with more than ordinary implications. What, it may be asked, is the authority for statements which seem to go far beyond the familiar facts of experience? Obviously, any philosophy attempting to grapple with the dilemmas of Western civilization must draw upon some source of explanation relatively unfamiliar to Western man. It is virtually certain that any real analysis of the deep dissatisfactions of the modern world will contain hitherto unconsidered or neglected elements; and these, therefore, ought not to be set aside simply because they are unfamiliar. On the contrary, sole reliance on the well-known formulas of what men commonly esteem as knowledge—either scientific or religious—may well be responsible for the multiplying failures of Western civilization. In contrast to the odd mixture of empirical science, eclectic speculation, and dying religious tradition that passes for “knowledge” today, Theosophy offers for consideration the teaching of the Gnosis, a body of practical psychological and moral truth which can be tested and verified by each man for himself.

The Theosophical teachings were defined by Madame Blavatsky as constituting, in essence, a synthesis of working principles. By learning to use these principles, she said, any

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man can gain independent knowledge of the laws of nature and the underlying realities of human experience. This proposition she founded on the
actual existence of men whose lives reveal a mastery of the use of those principles. Such men, Madame Blavatsky said, were her teachers. But while Theosophy was thus identified by its nineteenth-century expositor, inquirers were repeatedly warned against accepting its teachings “on faith.” The Theosophical Movement sought no credulous devotees, but serious students.

    In Theosophy, the inquirer will find much to think about, little to believe. There are “teachings,” it is true—definite metaphysical conceptions, which give the Theosophical philosophy its systematic character. These teachings were presented by Madame Blavatsky, without claim of “originality,” as the natural heritage from the intellectual and moral evolution of the human race. She offered them, not as dogmas, but as meta physical developments of principles verifiable in experience. A doctrine or teaching which forms part of this heritage, before it has been tested by the individual inquirer, may be compared to the “hypothesis” of the scientist. It invites neither belief nor denial, but investigation.

    This book, it is hoped, will serve as an introduction to further study of the Theosophical philosophy. Basically, Theosophy is an outlook on life which should have natural appeal for all men and women who believe in the inalienable spiritual potentialities of every human being, and who sense the futility of both scientific scepticism and sectarian religion. Most of all, Theosophy should appeal to those who are weary of human hatred, of the incessant conflicts, born of fear and ignorance, among men and nations, and who have resolved to discover, if they can, a practical philosophy of soul—a way of thinking and acting that will slowly but surely change the world.

                                                                                                                                    April 13, 1951

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE .     .           .           .             .           .           .    .      .           .           .  V

CHAPTER I.   THE PATH OF PROGRESS . . .         .           .   .           .           . 1

Steps in achieving freedom of thought—the nineteenth century era—the impact of Darwinism—the function of Spiritualism—the decline of religious faith—the perspective of the theosophical Founders—higher evolution—the cyclic law of progress—great reformers—the discovery of Oriental philosophy—the Eastern heritage.

CHAPTER II. NINETEENTH CENTURY SPIRITUALISM .   .           .           .  12

Beginnings of Spiritualism—the London Dialectical Society and its Report—early pioneers in psychic research—the experiments of Prof. Crookes—the scientific “wall of belief”—the appeal by Alfred Russel Wallace—atheists and materialism—Mesmer’s mission—animal magnetism and hypnotism psychic stirrings in America—evidence from Neoplatonism.

CHAPTER III. THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY AND ITS

FOUNDERS   .          .           .           .    .           .           .    .           .           .    .      27

H. P. Blavatsky’s arrival in America—meeting of H.P.B. and Olcott—the Eddy brothers—H.P.B. defends honest mediums—the “lamasery”
—W. Q. Judge joins the Movement—H.P.B.’s earliest articles—first hints of theosophical purpose—the “Hiraf” letter—Occultism: a “positive science”—Magic and Spiritualism compared—the Spiritualists’ dilemma—H.P.B. instructs Olcott and Judge—Judge describes first meeting with H.P.B.—H.P.B.’s “demonstrations”—the founding of the Theosophical Society—Olcott and the “occult”—T.S. organization.

CHAPTER IV. OBJECTS AND LITERATURE . . . .  .           .           .   .           .    44
The Three Objects of the T.S.—the “Brotherhood plank”—the true Founders—H.P.B. declares aims of T.S.—the publication of Isis Unveiled—Adepts and their philosophy—the need for ancient religions—ten basic propositions.

CHAPTER V. INDIA .            .           .           .           .           .           .           ..       56

Indian center established of Theosophy in India—the problem of caste—Arya Samaj—The Theosophist launched—forces of opposition—how the T.S. took hold in India—Sinnett’s Occult World—the Adepts and modern

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science—intent of the Adept Fraternity—Hume’s proposal discussed by Adepts—science devoid of philanthropy—in roads of materialism—a “soul-satisfying” philosophy offered—Esoteric Buddhism—the Indian National Congress.

CHAPTER VI. THEOSOPHISTS IN INDIA .            .           .           .   .           .     72

Spirit of The Theosophist—what are the Theosophists?— the T.S. a “Republic of Conscience”—no concern with politics—attitude of Missionaries—origin of Caves and Jungles of Hindustan—Theosophical activity in Ceylon—Damodar and Subba Row—the break with Arya Samaj—the “Kiddle incident”—the Coulombs—the Missionary Attack—H.P.B. demands trial—Olcott’s compromise—H.P.B.’s resignation as Corresponding Secretary—members weak in trial.

CHAPTER VII. THE LONDON S0CIETY FOR PSYCHICAL

RESEARCH   .           .           .     .           .           .     .           .           .     .           .     90

The Theosophist welcomes the new Society—investigation of theosophical phenomena begins—the first S.P.R. Report— Theosophy’s appeal to “Occult persons and methods”— H.P.B. declines to disclose occult laws—Mr. Hodgson’s Report—results of ex parte investigation—opposed motives of T.S. and S.P.R.—S.P.R. avoids challenge—involuntary mediumship vs. voluntary theosophical phenomena—basis for Committee’s conclusion—Judge discloses Coulomb plot— the handwriting “experts”—collision of theories between T.S. and S.P.R.—what was H.P.B.’s motive?

CHAPTER VIII. FAREWELL TO INDIA  .           .            .           .            .           . 106

H.P.B. departs for Europe—India minus H.P.B.—an Adept’s view of Olcott—Olcott’s organizational fervor—why H.P.B. did not return—H.P.B. begins movement in the West— Indian culture and English prejudice—T.S. accomplishments.

CHAPTER IX. THEOSOPHY IN AMERICA .          .           .           . .           .          116

Early days of T.S. work in America—Judge’s time of preparation—Judge visits H.P.B. in Paris—Judge witnesses Coulomb conspiracy—membership increases in America—establishment of The Path—Path keynote: brotherhood—Judge’s genius for application—Judge’s helpers—Letters That Have Helped Me—H.P.B.’s five messages to Americans.

CHAPTER X. LUCIFER AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE .  .           .           . .          127

H.P.B. in London—the Blavatsky Lodge—H.P.B. and Lucifer function of Lucifer—Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky published by Sinnett—The Secret Doc-

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trine appears—H.P.B. the transmitter—H.P.B. and the Secret Doctrine—the three sections of the T.S.—ordeals of chelaship—formation of Esoteric Section—Judge’s articles on occultism—occult status of H.P.B. and Judge—Olcott’s opposition to the E.S.

CHAPTER XI. THE COUES-COLLINS CHARGES . . ..           .           ..           .        143

Ambitions of Prof. Coues—claims of Mabel Collins—the disputed inspiration of Light on the Path—Mabel Collins’ “gifts”—the New York Sun prints Coues’ attack—H.P.B. sues for libel—preliminary victory—death of H.P.B.—the Sun’s retraction—Judge on “The Esoteric She.”

CHAPTER XII. H.P.B.’s DEATH AND AFTER . . ..           .           ..           .           ..   156
 Mrs. Besant joins the T.S.—London and European branches protest “orders” from Adyar—H.P.B. avoids autocracy— the passing of H.P.B.—
Judge and the E.S. problem—first worldwide Convention held—“autonomy” of the London Lodge—activities after Convention—Annie Besant’s reputation—Olcott’s position—Mrs. Besant’s proclamation on H.P.B.—Mrs. Besant claims messages from Masters—H.P.B. the Messenger—Col. Olcott on “idolatry”—Judge speaks for impersonality—the famous Path message—“Jasper Niemand”—Judge strikes at dogmatism.

CHAPTER XIII. THE SOCIETY VERSUS THE MOVEMENT .           .           ..          172
 H.P.B.’s devotion to Movement—Olcott’s attitude toward H.P.B.—the Adepts’ view of H.P.B.—H.P.B.’s support of Olcott—the Subba Row controversy—Richard Harte and the Theosophist—the T.S. a new Rome?—H.P.B.’s “interference”—Harte’s attitude toward the E.S.—Judge takes issue with Harte—the real “Centre”: H.P.B.—H.P.B. loyal to CAUSE, not place—theosophical societies autonomous—H.P.B. appeals to colleagues.

CHAPTER XIV. COL. OLCOTT, ANNIE BESANT, AND
W. Q. JUDGE        .           .           ..           .           ..           .           ..           .           ..     190

Charges against Olcott—Olcott resigns Presidency—Judge voted Olcott’s successor—Mrs. Besant violates E.S. neutrality—E.S. and T.S. distinct entities—progress of American Section—Judge’s declarations in Path—Sinnett’s quarrel with the S.D.—Sinnett asserts “independent” occult teaching—H.P.B. the only agency for Masters’ letters—Olcott on H.P.B.'s “defects”—Old Diary Leaves—Judge’s counsel on Masters—the T.S. and the World’s Parliament of Religions—Chakravarti and Mrs. Besant—Annie Besant prefers charges against Judge—Olcott’s ultimatum to Judge.

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CHAPTER XV. THE CASE AGAINST WILLIAM Q. JUDGE .           .           ..           .206

Judge denies charges—no basis for having investigating committee—how to judge Mahatma Letters—protest by Keightley and Mead—can the T.S. decide on “Messages” ?—American Convention of 1894—T.S. cannot fix a dogma—resolutions upholding Judge—Council proceedings in London—Judge acted not as Vice-President—judicial enquiry begins—Olcott switches the issue—Olcott admits impropriety of “charges”— Olcott revokes Judge’s suspension—Committee decision: Judge case not within its jurisdiction—Judge’s silence.

CHAPTER XVI. AFTERMATH OF THE JUDGE CASE . ..           .           ..           .      228

London Convention of European section—”Jury of Honor” proposed—Mrs. Besant’s charges against Judge—Mrs. Besant discusses transmission of Messages—why Mrs. Besant changed—Judge repeats denial of “charges”—H.P.B. on “precipitation”—Judge case “settled”—Mrs. Besant consults with ‘W. R. Old in India—Westminster Gazette attack—calumnies against Judge spread broadcast—Judge’s circular of Nov. 3, 1894—Chakravarti's influence on Mrs. Besant—Judge deposes Annie Besant—Mrs. Besant’s counter-circular—the “Judge case” again—Mrs. Besant publishes “charges” and “testimony”—H.P.B. quoted on Annie Besant.

CHAPTER XVII. THE T. S. IN AMERICA. . . . .           .           ..           .           ..           250

American Convention of 1895 forms Theosophical Society in America—Judge the Life President of T.S.A.—Judge’s letter to European Convention defines Theosophical Movement—the Prayag Letter—Besant and Olcott deny Prayag Letter—Sinnett’s private suspicions of H.P.B.—causes of animus toward Judge—Leadbeater’s removal—J. D. Buck’s testimony for Judge.

CHAPTER XVIII. THE DEATH OF WILLIAM Q. JUDGE . .           .           ..           .    264

Judge’s associates allege a “successor”—the “occult successor” heralded—Convention of 1896—“Promise” identified as Mrs. Tingley—Theosophical World Crusade—Point Loma headquarters established—Hargrove repudiates Mrs. Tingley—1898 Convention and splits in T.S.A.—Fussell contradicts himself—Dr. de Purucker claims “succession”—gesture of “fraternization’‘—“succession” of Col. Conger—publicizing of esoteric teaching.

CHAPTER XIX. AFTERMATH IN AMERICA . . .           .           ..           .           ..      . 279

E. T. Hargrove’s theosophical group—the “Temple of the People” A. Neresheimer’s affidavit—J. H. Fussell a faith-

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ful witness—Mr. Ryan’s case for “successorship”—H.P.B.'s own statement on apostolic succession—Judge’s “orderly succession’‘—the so-called “occult diary’‘—Mrs. Cleather’s disclosures—psychic origin of Tingley succession—new “explanations” of succession.

CHAPTER XX. THE ADYAR SOCIETY . . . . ..           ..           ..           ..           ..         290

Leadbeater case—Olcott’s death—Mrs. Besant invites Leadbeater to return—Mrs. Besant creates orders, organizations, and “Liberal Catholic Church”—the “Star” Congress of 1925—“Arhats,” “World-Mother,” and “Messiah”—Krishnamurti’s defection—the passing of Mrs. Besant and Leadbeater—Mr. Arundale recommends the S.D.—Jinarajadasa and “God”—Letter of warning to Mrs. Besant—Mrs. Besant and Olcott admit privately wrong done Judge.

CHAPTER XXI. CONTINUING CURRENTS . . . ..           ..           ..           ..           ..   301

The prolific year 1898—Theosophical Society of New York—the Word—Dr. Wilder—Mrs. Langford—Dr. Dower’s “Temple of the People”—Francia LaDue: “Blue Star”—Alice Cleather—writings by students on H.P.B.—Steiner’s Anthroposophy—G.R.S. Mead’s Quest Society—Max Heindel—split-off branches of T.S.—Manly P. Hall—the Ballards and the “I Am” movement—AMORC—Lemurian Fellowship—“swamis” and “yogis”—Æ faithful to Judge—other phases of Theosophic influence—“Yoga” and Western psychology—Gerald Heard—Judge’s warning on Hindu “teachers’‘—Theosophical Movement a tidal phenomenon—the genuine successorship—H. P. Blavatsky still “alive”—stand of the Canadian Theosophist—impartiality of the Peace Lodge ( Eirenicon )—the platform of U.L.T.—the contribution of Robert Crosbie.

CHAPTER XXII. PRESENT AND FUTURE . . . . .           ..           ..           ..           ..    .319

The outlook in 1950—predicts psychic cycle—psychic vulnerability increasing—psychic factors in politics—H. P. Blavatsky’s purpose—effect of Theosophical Movement on world history—return to Nature and Community movements—influence of Gandhi—war-resistance—evidence of new growth—developments in psychiatry and psychology—progressive and adult education—the real Theosophical Movement.

NOTES           .        .           ..           ..           ..           ..           ..           ..           ..           . 333

INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . ..           ..           ..           ..           ..           ..           ..           ..          345

THE THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT

THE PATH OF PROGRESS

    WHEREVER THOUGHT has struggled to be free, wherever spiritual ideas, as opposed to forms and dogmatism, have been promulgated, there is to be discerned that great surge of moral evolution which H. P. Blavatsky described and named as the Theosophical Movement. It may, therefore, be considered simply as the path of spiritual progress, individually and collectively, of human beings. The continuous effort of men to act upon their aspiration toward a higher and nobler life is always pressing against and bursting through the limitations of the established social order. Organized religion, invariably a bastion of the status quo, gives formal structure to the compromise between idealism and the forces of human timidity—the longing of men for external security. In this sense, churches, governments, parties, sects, are all “political” adaptations—expedient arrangements on behalf of the “practical” rather than the ideal. They all in time become irredeemably corrupt, and must change, as the times change, as human defects come out, and as the necessities of intellectual and moral evolution compel such alterations.

    The Protestant Reformation, while ending in a multitude of Christian sects, began as a revolutionary challenge to sacerdotal authority, and was thus a part of the greater Theosophical Movement. Masonry, with its constructive ideals and devotion to religious liberty, served the purposes of the Move-ment in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and still does to some extent, through its elevating symbolism and by its continuing defense of freedom of thought. The formation of the American Republic with its noble Declaration of Independence, its equality of all men before the law, its ideals of

brotherhood and non-sectarianism, must be accounted a great forward step in the Theosophical Movement. And with the abolition of human slavery by all the great Western nations during the nineteenth century, another stride toward the emancipation of the race may be acclaimed.

    Notable achievements in human liberation are commonly marked by the successful overthrow of some form of religious oppression. The divine right” of an orthodox God speaking through a vested clergy was repudiated by every voice raised against the presumptions of Catholic hierarchy. The “divine right” of kings became an empty superstition after the American and French Revolutions. The “divine right” of one man or caste of men to enslave others was the real issue of the American Civil War. It is a fact attested by countless social historians that the heavy hand of religious authority always adds to the burdens of the simple and the poor. Religion, while containing keys to the highest mysteries, in its organized forms has seldom failed to confirm the hold of the intelligently selfish over the great mass of mankind—either directly, by siding with autocratic government, or more subtly, through fear-laden dogmas and by a “spiritual” escapism which ignores evil conditions and human injustice. Since the Renaissance, men devoted to the cause of human freedom have been anti clerical almost by instinct, having discovered through long experience the numerous common interests allying established religion with the agencies of social oppression. Thus the secular movements of recent centuries, Democracy and Socialism, the drive for universal suffrage, the Class Struggle and the endless controversies between capital and labor, have all been characterized at some stage in their history by a yearning for freedom of thought, for moral emancipation as well as for an end to economic and political bondage. In this aspect, they represent the rising current of the Theosophical Movement, however mistaken, misguided, or perverted to narrow or destructive purposes and ends.

    The nineteenth century was above all a period of conflict between the old and the new, a time of ferment in the intellectual and moral world, and of growing self-consciousness in the field of social philosophy. Nineteenth-century science was the fecund parent of scores of new doctrines and theories

about the nature of things. The first half of the century was a sort of Indian summer, in which both Europe and America gathered in the rich harvest of Revolutionary freedom secured by the struggles of the eighteenth century. Transcendentalist idealism brightened the Western world, concealing for a time the maturing forces of materialism in science and masking the decline of revolutionary ideals into mere shibboleths of reorganizing conservativism. During the middle years of the century, however, two new factors of disturbance emerged—Darwinism and Spiritualism.

    The far-reaching effects of Darwin’s publication of The Origin of Species in 1859 are still to be measured. The most important result of this theory was the final transformation of the idea of progress from the confining theological teaching of salvation into the modern concept of evolution. While the eighteenth century had opened up undreamed-of possibilities of political reform, and while the old relationships of caste and status, fixed institutions during the Middle Ages, were dissolving into other social patterns, there was, until Darwin, no popular idea of Evolution. Darwin provided an integrating principle for the loose rationalist conception of Progress. According to his theory, a desirable future for mankind was to be obtained only by furthering the growth-processes possible under natural law, and he supported this idea by exhaustive researches in natural history. It was a principle easy to grasp, and soon seen as an attractive alternative to dependence on “divine grace”—the latter being a thoroughly irrational affair.

    The response of free-thinking men to this doctrine was enthusiastic and immediate. The Theory of Evolution would serve as the foundation for deliberate human striving in all fields of human betterment. Its social and philosophical implications were endless. The materialism of the theory was hardly an objection; to the scientifically minded, eager for weapons in the war on theology, any plausible materialistic theory was welcome, and Evolution had the advantage of a great mass of scientific evidence in its support. Although the Darwinian theory was bitterly opposed by the clergy, and its author subjected to every form of ridicule, slander and calumny that religious bigotry could invent, the doctrine gained headway through the years, and Darwin himself lived to see

his facts admitted, his conclusions adopted, in whole or in part, even by many of his detractors.

    While limited in its view of “evolution” from the stand point of occult philosophy, the Darwinian Theory was nevertheless the greatest advance in basic scientific inquiry since the time of Newton, and was indispensable in preparing the ground for the conception of spiritual evolution outlined in The Secret Doctrine. Whatever the defects of the Darwinian Theory, they are due to no lack of honesty, zeal or industry on the part of its great author, but rather to his mode of research, the assumptions of his age, and the inherent limitations of all inductive reasoning. So immense has been the influence of the Darwinian doctrine of evolution on the prevailing ideas of recent generations that it is difficult for the average mind of today to realize how this theory of physical evolution could ever have been questioned, denied, or opposed.

    The impact of Darwinism on modern thought is well known, but the effects of Spiritualism have been seriously neglected by contemporary historians. Quite possibly, Spiritualism had more to do than any other single factor in producing among millions that transitional state of mind into which the rigid ideas of previous centuries had already begun to disintegrate. It struck a death-blow at all priestly claims to special knowledge of post-mortem existence, for the clergy had no better explanation of psychic phenomena than any one else. To the bereaved, who are often indifferent to orthodox vagaries on a future life, Spiritualism offered the prospect of immediate assurance and consolation. To the unreligious but curious, it brought a fascinating area for experimentation, resulting, in later years, in the semi-respectable science of Psychic Research. Spiritualistic phenomena also served as contemporary “miracles” on which might be founded a strongly emotional religion, undemanding in its moral requirements, and powerful in “conversion.” One could become a Spiritualist without too great sacrifice of cherished religious ideas. It is a fact of incidental interest that Spiritualist doctrines permitted an illegitimate union of religious fervor with the new scientific idea of evolution—for the “Summer land” of departed “spirits” soon assumed the character of an evolutionary series of states or degrees of progress after

death. But the multiplicity of “revelations” offered by mediums, who sprang up by the hundreds, each providing another version of the processes and modes of life after death, made any unity of doctrine or consistent philosophy out of the question. The function of Spiritualism was iconoclastic toward dogma, and personal for its believers. It disturbed, rather than replaced, conventional religious ideas.

    The last half of the nineteenth century, therefore, formed an epoch during which old orthodoxies were undermined and discredited, while the possibilities of new faiths seemed limitless, although the chaotic expression of these new tendencies remained unharnessed by any central belief. In retrospect, nearly every cry for intellectual or moral unity during those troubled years may now be recognized as a partisan appeal which ignored or denied some important aspect of human affairs. It was, pre-eminently, an age of enthusiastic and specialized research, giving birth to at least a dozen new departments of science, and stirring the human imagination to strike out in directions overlooked by earlier generations. At its conclusion, the cosmopolitan thinker, William James, summed up the philosophical issue of its rich productiveness with the term, “Pluralism,” so naming the agnostic credo that Reality is not one, but many, and that a unified conception of human experience is not possible for the modern world. The skepticism of James, apparently justified by the overwhelming flood of unrelated “brute facts” pouring from every field of inquiry, gave sophisticated sanction to the conscious materialism of the twentieth century.

    The same broad forces which undermined the speculative idealism of philosophers swept away the common man’s security in traditional religion. While the extraordinary progress in applied science filled for a time the ethical vacuum left by the decline of religious faith, so-called “practical” interests and labors blinded the great majority of men to the accumulating moral contradictions of Western civilization. Pseudo-philosophies founded on the biological concept of evolution, on the Freudian interpretation of emotions, and on the Rotarian slogans of business and trade, withheld for a time the ultimate disillusionment of the twentieth century, but these rule-of-thumb moralities lacked the vigor to with-

stand the physical and moral destruction of modern war. The world of today is a world without faith. It is a world, therefore, in somber preparation for despair—the condition of mind and feeling reached by men who have no foundation for their aspirations, no resting place for hopes.

    One purpose of this book is to show that the Theosophical Movement, in the conception of its Founders, was inaugurated with a clear perspective of the historical forces that were recreating the mind and society of the Western world in the nineteenth century, and with foresight of the social and moral dilemmas that would confront all mankind during the present epoch. The Theosophical Society of 1875 opened a great channel for labors on behalf of the general welfare and enlightenment of the human race. It was not founded as a cult or sect to bring personal deliverance or special knowledge to the fortunate few who might accept its doctrines. The Founders of the Theosophical Movement had little interest in starting “societies,” or groups for “occult study,” as such. Their concern was with the long-term view of human evolution, with the spiritual and moral needs of the race for generations and centuries to come.

    If Theosophy does indeed offer knowledge of the laws of human evolution, then the course of the Theosophical Movement, its progress, as well as the character of the obstacles impeding its advance, provide the means of testing the validity of that teaching in practical experience. At this point, therefore, certain basic Theosophical conceptions of evolutionary law may be stated.

    So far as humanity is concerned, Theosophy teaches a triple evolutionary scheme, in which, at the present time, the physical is subordinated to the processes of intellectual and spiritual, or moral, development. In short, Evolution is soul evolution, proceeding under moral law which is an essential part of the natural order. The ideal goal toward which man kind slowly moves is a great brotherhood of all human beings, in which, finally, will flower every evolutionary potentiality. Reaching this goal, however, is conditional upon deliberate human striving toward it, upon the achievement of knowledge of man’s nature and destiny, and upon the factors of moral decision which make every human being a free agent, capable

of choosing to become either a Christ or a Judas, either an altruist or a self-seeking egotist. For the race, as for the individual, Theosophy preaches the doctrine of “salvation by works.” Such “works,” however, must be informed by knowledge of human needs; hence, mastery of Theosophy means study of the philosophical doctrines which it teaches, as well as their practical application in individual life and toward larger social ends.

    If there is an underlying spiritual and intellectual evolution with visible effects in history, a study of the past should disclose that the formation of the Theosophical Society and the permeation of the mind of the race by Theosophical ideas were preceded and accomplished by numerous collateral efforts. In his History of Civilization in England, a work foremost among such influences, the great English historian, H. T. Buckle, sums up the lessons of the past in a statement which may serve equally as a prophecy of the future of Theosophy and the Theosophical Movement. In the first volume of this work, Buckle wrote:

    Owing to circumstances still unknown, there appear, from time to time, great thinkers, who, devoting their lives to a single purpose, are able to anticipate the progress of mankind, and to produce a religion or a philosophy, by which important effects are eventually brought about. But if we look into history, we shall clearly see that, although the origin of a new opinion may be thus due to a single man, the result which the new opinion produces will depend on the condition of the people among whom it is propagated. If either a religion or a philosophy is too much in advance of a nation, it can do no present service, but must bide its time, until the minds of men are ripe for its reception. . . . Every science and every creed has had its martyrs; . . According to the ordinary course of affairs, a few generations pass away, and then there comes a period, when these very truths are looked upon as commonplace facts; and a little later, there comes another period, in which they are declared to be necessary, and even the dullest intellects wonder how they could ever have been denied.’

    According to the Theosophic view of history, Buckle’s “circumstances still unknown” are in fact due to what may be termed the karmic provision of spiritual and intellectual evolution. Under the great moral Law, called “Karma” by the Buddhists, and at transitional periods in the cyclic progress

of humanity, wise teachers restore to mankind through both direct and indirect channels some of the knowledge once known in the past, but which in the lapse of time has become lost or obscured by the complexities of psychic and personal evolution. These teachers, sometimes termed “Elder Brothers,” in the Theosophical literature, are themselves at the forefront of the stream of evolution to which we belong. As such, they have a natural function to perform, taking an active, although often undisclosed, part in human history. And while this aspect of the operation of cyclic law is frequently delayed, even obstructed, by the ignorance of human beings, each rise and fall of civilization is succeeded by a regeneration and further progression.

    The scene of the nineteenth-century cycle of the Theosophical Movement included the United States, Europe and India. In America, the rising energies of a new nation gave promise of great success for this movement of self-reform based upon a psychology of soul-knowledge. India, an ancient source of the Wisdom-Religion, was slowly awakening from the lethargy of centuries, getting ready for a cultural renaissance that would revive her former glory and give contemporary vigor to the Eastern heritage of spiritual philosophy. England, where Madame Blavatsky made her headquarters during the closing years of her mission, was a natural link between the ancient East and the youthful West, both politically and geographically, and served also as a vantage-point from which to affect the main continent of Europe.

    The flow of Theosophic ideas from these centers entered the ferment of nineteenth-century thought, leavening its spirit, and challenging both the bigotry of inherited religion and the arrogant assurance of scientific materialism. The establishment of the Movement in the West followed close upon a cycle of sudden progress in material achievement by Western nations. Change was in the air. The practical consequences of the great developments in invention, scientific discovery, transportation, manufacture and communication were bringing the members of the human family closer together. Old ways of life were rapidly transformed. Traditions died. Customs were altered. Natural as well as cultural barriers to human fraternity were falling all about.

    These great transitions were signalized in the political field by the careers of such leaders and reformers as Lincoln, Mazzini, Garibaldi, John Bright, and others who served the Rights of Man. The moral apathy of the Churches was exposed by freethinkers of enduring fame—Robert G. Ingersoll in America, Charles Bradlaugh in England, and in the church itself by such men as Charles Kingsley and W. E. Channing. By these and many others, trip-hammer blows were struck at complacent orthodoxy. Whether apparently pursuing the path of agnosticism, of a purely socialistic or materialistic altruism, or of a liberalized version of conventional belief, the efforts of these reformers commanded a wide following and to a large extent broke down the habitual acceptance of provincial and intolerant opinions.

    Philosophical speculations like those of Herbert Spencer, the esthetic revolt of men like Ruskin, the penetrating truculence of Carlyle, and the rejection of conventional attitudes by such writers as Dickens, Eliot, Balzac, Tolstoy, Whitman, and Dostoevsky, all aided in the pioneer work of the Theosophical Movement. All fought for the unrestricted domain of individual conscience, a larger outlook upon human life and human duty, as opposed to anyone’s ipse dixit or “thus saith the Lord.”

    Another tide of change began with the discovery by scholars and travelers of the philosophic wealth of the Orient. Until the nineteenth century, the masses of the West existed in almost complete isolation from the living East with its immense but alien stores of psychological and metaphysical teachings. The sources of Western culture had been limited by natural barriers to ancient Greece and Rome, and it was little suspected that the first civilized peoples of Europe, no less than their modern successors, had in fact derived both their inspiration and their learning from the exhaustless treasury of Oriental thought.

    The first translation of The Bhagavad-Gita by Charles Wilkins, appeared toward the close of the eighteenth century. In 1807 William Jones rendered into English the Hindu classic, The Institutes of Manu, telling his readers that an understanding of Hindu custom and belief would assist in the administration of a colony destined to “add largely to

the wealth of Britain.” A little later, Arthur Schopenhauer read a Latin translation of the Upanishads, done from a Persian version by Anquetil-Duperron, pioneer in Avesta scholarship, and its inspiration became manifest throughout the writings of the great German pessimist. Emerson’s journals teem with references to Oriental literature. Manu, the Gita, the Upanishads, the Vedas, and numerous other works found place in his library beside the riches of Platonism. Thoreau also, and Edward Bellamy, the prophet of social reform, were steeped in the mysticism and philosophy of the ancient East.

    Sir Edwin Arnold’s Light of Asia arrived in America in 1879, arousing extraordinary admiration among the Transcendentalists. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote twenty-six pages about it in a contemporary review. Lafcadio Hearn, having read this poetic account of the life and teachings of Buddha, predicted that “Buddhism in some esoteric form may prove the religion of the future.” He dreamed of a revolution in “the whole occidental religious world” through this Oriental faith. Many thousands in the West were led by this book to realize for the first time in their lives that the great ethical ideas of Jesus were all anticipated by Buddha, and were joined in his teaching with a rational philosophy entirely absent from the Christian tradition.

    Multiplication of influences of this sort began to wear away the familiar Western contempt for “heathen” teachings, and with the appearance of many-volumed editions of Oriental religion, such as Max Muller’s Sacred Books of the East, the world of learning was forced to admit that in many respects the Eastern sages were our peers, if not our superiors, in matters of philosophy and ethical insight.

    These, then, were some of the factors which had opened up the Western mind to new possibilities, had made men question old beliefs, causing them to look about for some affirmative doctrine that might synthesize the widening diversities of human experience and knowledge. The latter years of the nineteenth century offered great opportunity to one who could present facts rather than theories, principles rather than beliefs. Thus, in founding the Theosophical Society and making her first public exposition of the Theo-

sophical philosophy, H. P. Blavatsky maintained that the hour had come for bringing some unified explanation to the besetting problems of the modern world. Religion claimed man to be a creature, tainted from his origin, ensouled by an outside God on whose favor depended all human happiness, in both this world and the next. Science, while challenging the authority of all religious beliefs, offered the alternative of bestial ancestors for the human species, traced from a ferment in the primordial slime, and allowed no idea of moral reality or spiritual existence to color the consistency of its materialism. Spiritualism, the third combatant in the struggle for human faith, was an intruder with no allies but its own fanatical conviction—a weird apostle from another world, bringing promise of release from great personal sorrow for some; for others, a nauseous revival of medieval witchcraft and necromancy.

    It was among the Spiritualists, the friendless outcasts of both Science and Religion, that H. P. Blavatsky began her mission, because they had penetrated somewhat into the hidden realms of nature, and had brought to light the reality of forces disbelieved and laughed at for generations in the West. Understood and controlled, those forces might be used to restore a living faith in the immortal soul—in the godlike potentialities of the entire human race.

NINETEENTH CENTURY SPIRITUALISM

    AS THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY in its earliest days, found most of its supporters among the more thoughtful of the Spiritualists, or among those stirred by Spiritualistic phenomena to investigate the subject of psychic powers, it is pertinent to notice some of the events and fortunes of the Spiritualistic movement before 1875. Modern Spiritualism began with the mediumistic manifestations of the Fox sisters at Hydesville, New York, in 1848. Within a few years it had spread throughout the Western world. In the words of Alfred Russel Wallace, “other mediums were discovered in different parts of the country, as if a special development of this abnormal power were then occurring.” Famous mediums travelled Europe, demonstrating their wonders and gaining the patronage of royalty. Psychics and sensitives were found among all classes and the forthcoming revelations and physical manifestations shook to their foundations the established authorities of the day. Men began to wonder at these strange happenings, to ask questions, and some—although only the few—to think for themselves. It was the inner voice of the masses, their spiritual intuition—that traditional enemy of cold intellectual reasoning, the legitimate progenitor of Materialism—which had awakened from its long cataleptic sleep. However unsatisfactory their philosophical interpretation, these phenomena came to be regarded as evident proofs of a life beyond—opening, moreover, a wide range for the admission of every metaphysical possibility.

    By 1850, seances were being held in California, Oregon, Texas, and in several southern states. Spiritualist revealers bloomed like the Hebrew prophets of old, and occasionally some figure of eminence made public admission of his interest in Spiritualism. Horace Greeley, famous editor of the New York Tribune, testified to the genuineness of the “rappings” produced by the Fox sisters, exonerating them from charges of fraud. J. W. Edmonds, a Justice of the New York Supreme

Court, known for his integrity, defended mediums in the press. N. P. Tallmadge, a former Governor of Wisconsin, publicly supported the claims of the mediums. During the years 1851 and 1852, sufficient interest in Spiritualism developed to support the establishment of several journals entirely devoted to its phenomena and their interpretation.

    From these beginnings, modern Spiritualism gained wide spread popular attention, and while nearly all scientists of any reputation maintained a lofty skepticism, the few exceptions to this rule had the effect of increasing the fascination that the subject held for the man in the street. The impressive personal-experience aspect of Spiritualism commonly led to a fierce will-to-believe on the part of people hungry for spiritual verity, so that the handful of intellectually honest scientists who dared to admit the reality of psychic phenomena became heroes ceaselessly quoted by intoxicated enthusiasts. One such American scientist was Dr. Robert Hare, professor of chemistry at the University of Pennyslvania, who in 1854 published Spiritualism Scientifically Demonstrated, an account of elaborate experiments which convinced him the manifestations were genuine. He had originally undertaken the task of investigation in order, he said, to destroy with scientific weapons “the gross delusion called Spiritualism,” but was soon overwhelmed by concrete evidences of the supernormal. He failed, however, to interest the American Association for the Promotion of Science, which at one of its conventions rejected all his proposals for scientific study of psychic phenomena. No more successful in overcoming the unbelief of his colleagues was Prof. James J. Mapes, president of the Mechanics Institute of New York, a distinguished chemist who had been honored internationally by scientific bodies. Beginning a study of Spiritualism to redeem respected friends, who, he declared, were “fast running to mental seed and imbecility,” he ended as a determined witness for the phenomena.

    The appeal of Spiritualism was unique in the nineteenth century. With the rise of the rationalist spirit, fairly established by the revolutionary thinkers of the preceding epoch, Western intellectuality had made disbelief in ghostly or “occult” pheonmena into a virtual dogma—a dogma, more-

over, enjoying the emphatic endorsement of scientific authority. But Spiritualism, as a historical influence, was much more than an “intellectual” affair. It dealt directly with feelings, hopes and fears that are basic in all humans. “Death,” as The Bhagavad-Gita says, “is certain to all mortals.” Psychic or “spiritual” phenomena, promising more than empty theological phrases about life after death, were events which could arouse the intense interest and excitement of thousands who had despaired of any instruction on this subject from either religion or science. The facts of Spiritualism, if genuine, implied a whole universe of human experience untouched by modern thought. Investigators of psychic phenomena found themselves in possession of a stupendous discovery; they spoke to the world with impassioned declarations. Meeting disdain or contempt from the representatives of orthodoxy, they proceeded to form societies, cults and religious sects which rapidly grew to astonishing proportions, drawing a host of followers from the disillusioned, the bereaved, and the honestly curious. The shock of immediate psychic experience was a force that could not be denied.

    The first serious attempt to investigate the possibility of metaphysical or psychic phenomena by a quasi-scientific body was instituted in 1869 by the London Dialectical Society. For eighteen months the Society’s Committee of thirty-four well-known persons took evidence, submitting a full Report to the Council of the Society in 1870. The Council, however, declined to publish the Report, whereupon the Committee itself published the results of the investigation, including a collection of startling opinions as to the “supernatural origin” of psychic phenomena. “A large majority of the members of your Committee,” the Report stated, “have become actual witnesses to several phases of the phenomena without the aid or presence of any professional medium, although the greater part of them commenced their investigations in an avowedly skeptical spirit.” The Report concludes:

your Committee, taking into consideration the high character and great intelligence of many of the witnesses to the more extraordinary facts, the extent to which their testimony is supported by the reports of the sub-committees, and the absence of any proof of imposture or delusion as regards a large portion

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of the Rosicrucians, and there was something like a philosophy of Spiritualism in the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg. A few learned Masons and Kabalists in Europe and America still pored over ancient volumes and sought the elusive secrets of ceremonial magic from medievalists who concealed more than they taught. Writers like Wallace, Howitt, and Catherine Crowe with her curious Night Side of Nature, helped to acquaint the Spiritualist Movement with earlier cycles of psycho-religious phenomena, providing the beginnings of a contemporary literature on the subject. The treatises of Reichenbach, Du Potet and Deleuze, dealing with important ramifications of mesmeric or magnetic phenomena, showed that a new universe of subjective life awaited exploration by Western man.

    But who would provide the charts for such exploration? Who could gather into one great scheme of man’s psychic and spiritual existence these disparate currents of experience and bizarre and bookish learning? Was there anyone who could reduce this clamor and competition of ideas, theories and unrelated facts to some semblance of order? And who could add—what was needed most of all—a foundation of moral verity which, in a world of decaying faiths, the heart of man might welcome, and his intellect accept?
 
   This was the great task assumed by H. P. Blavatsky, and after her, by the men and women who became disciples in the course of the Theosophical Movement.

    THE HISTORY of the Theosophical Society, as the first practical vehicle of the Theosophical Movement of the nineteenth century, is inextricably bound up with the life and work of H. P. Blavatsky. Whatever the outward steps leading to the formation of the Theosophical Society, it was her sense of mission that recognized the need for the Society and generated the interest of others who became associated with her in that enterprise.

    By birth a Russian of noble family, Madame Blavatsky had been a wanderer for more than twenty years in many lands, both East and West. The record of these journeyings is partly contained in her own writings, and an account of her early years is provided by A. P. Sinnett in his Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky.’ Although the events of this period may at times cast a suggestive light on obscure problems of the Movement, such details have no fitting place in the present work, nor could they be properly understood without a thorough grasp of the Theosophical philosophy. We are at present concerned with her public work in the world, which began soon after her arrival in New York in July of 1873. She lived in retirement in Manhattan and Brooklyn for more than a year. In October of 1874 she visited the Eddy farmhouse near Chittenden, Vermont, where the brothers, William and Horatio Eddy, had gained notoriety by the production of extraordinary spiritualistic phenomena. There she became acquainted with Col. Henry S. Olcott, who had been commissioned by the New York Graphic to investigate the Eddy phenomena and to report on them for its readers.
Olcott was an American who had acquired his title during the Civil War. At the time of meeting Madame Blavatsky, he was forty-two years old—her junior by a year. He had been agricultural editor of the New York Tribune, had written numerous articles on various subjects for many publications,

   To theology the Occultist of the future will have to demonstrate that the Gods of the mythologies, the Elohim of Israel as well as the religious and theological mysteries of Christianity, to begin with the Trinity, sprang from the sanctuaries of Memphis and Thebes; that their mother Eve is but the spiritualized Psyche of old, both of them paying a like penalty for their curiosity, descending to Hades or hell, the latter to bring back to earth the famous Pandora’s box, the former to search out and crush the head of the serpent—symbol of time and evil—the crime of both expiated by the pagan Prometheus and the Christian Lucifer; the first delivered by Hercules, the second conquered by the Saviour.
 

    Here was more than Spiritualist controversy, however brilliant and skillful.

    Mastery of her subject is evident in every line of this article by Madame Blavatsky. She writes with accents of certainty and power, projecting the far-seeing gaze of the disciplined occultist upon the contemporary scene; she defines with the surety of one who has triumphed over them the obstacles which stand in the way of the seeker after secret truth. The authentic credentials of H. P. Blavatsky, as Teacher and Adept, are in these articles printed in the Spiritual Scientist in 1875. Intimate, first-hand knowledge is the context of what she wrote; her words are joined with meaning that grows, not from “literary research,” but from evident personal power based on practical experience in the science of occultism.

    The Spiritualists of 1875 knew nothing of these matters; one need only turn the pages of the journals devoted to Spiritualistic phenomena and religion to discover the striking contrast between the philosophic vigor of the writings of Madame Blavatsky and the psychic fancies of conventional Spiritualism. The doctrines of the Spiritualists were a shallow reflection of wishful thinking, well-intentioned, but without either intellectual strength or firm moral foundation. Lacking in philosophy, the religious ideas of the Spiritualists drew support from fanatical conviction rather than from metaphysical depth, tending to repel rather than to invite intelligent inquiry. Theirs was a faith in which inherited sentiments united with intense emotionalism—a faith cut off from the possibilities of rational development. To accept, therefore, the line of investigation proposed by H. P. Blavatsky meant for the Spiritualists a willingness to admit the pitiful inadequacy of their explanations of psychic phenomena and to con-

    The task assumed by Madame Blavatsky involved winning the attention of the public for the teachings she had to impart. Her defense of the Spiritualists, so far as the reality of their phenomena was concerned, had made the members of this outcast sect her friends and temporary allies; but what would they say when she repudiated as false and even dangerously misleading their claims and theories of “spirit survival”? As she disclosed that her intent was to expose the errors of Spiritualism, as well as to establish the fact of psychic phenomena, would the devotees of nineteenth-century Necromancy be able to recognize the larger meaning of their movement, and to become, like the ancient hierophants, masters of psychic phenomena instead of its fetish-worshipping slaves?

    What she could say openly on behalf of the Spiritualists, she did, with that generosity of spirit which characterized all her public utterances. And while the majority of them drew back in injured alarm at the occult critique of spiritualistic theories, there were a few who saw the promise of these ideas, and were reflective enough to admit the justice of Madame Blavatsky’s strictures on the low moral tone of most séance communications. Her real labors were with these few, and with Olcott and Judge, who met with her night after night during 1875, to be instructed in the philosophy of occultism and the rationale of psychic or spiritualistic phenomena. From Col. Olcott’s Old Diary Leaves, published many years later in the Theosophist, we learn how the hours of his early acquaintance with Madame Blavatsky were spent. To the evening gatherings in her “lamasery” came Spiritualists, Kabalists, Platonists, students of science and of ancient religion, the skeptical, the curious, and seekers after the marvelous. Olcott’s own interest was heavily weighted by his spiritualistic tendencies. Slow to grasp the full significance of Madame Blavatsky’s analysis of the dangers of mediumship

    Judge, like Olcott, was witness to numerous demonstrations of occult powers by Madame Blavatsky, done in illustration of some principle or tenet in which they were being instructed. Her purpose, in these demonstrations, was to establish the difference between the perfectly controlled powers of the adept, and the involuntary wonders produced by mediums in Spiritualistic trance. Judge’s later works show the fruit of this training, for he discusses occult subjects as one writing from personal experience—a quality lacking in most Theosophical authors other than Madame Blavatsky herself. Years afterward, he spoke of these “amazing feats of magic, hundreds of which I witnessed in broad daylight or in blazing gas-light, from 1875 to 1878.”°

    During 1875, Olcott and Judge learned from Madame Blavatsky more or less of her travels and their purpose. Among many other things, she told them of her unsuccessful attempt to establish a group at Cairo, Egypt, in 1871, to investigate the rationale of mediumship and its phenomena. Moved by what he had seen and heard, and by his ardent desire to explore more deeply the phenomena which fascinated him, Col. Olcott, in May, 1875, proposed the formation of a private “Miracle Club” for psychic research. This project, however, failed for lack of a medium. Olcott next became interested in the “occult” promises of a Mr. George Felt, an Egyptologist who claimed to be able to control the “elementals” or nature-spirits. On the evening of September 7, 1875, Mr. Felt lectured in Madame Blavatsky’s apartment on “The Lost Canon of Proportion of the Egyptians.” While those present were discussing the talk, Col. Olcott passed a note to Judge bearing these words: “Would it not be a good thing to form a society for this kind of study?” Mr. Judge read the note, passed it to Madame Blavatsky, who nodded assent, and Judge proposed that the assemblage come to order and that Col. Olcott act as chairman to consider the proposal. It was unanimously

    As originally constituted, the Theosophical Society was entirely democratic in its by-laws and organization. All officers were elective. The by-laws provided for three classes of Fellows: Active, Corresponding, and Honorary. The earlier Societies established after the foundation of the Parent body adopted its preamble and made additional rules and by-laws, not in conflict, to suit themselves. Intercourse between the various Societies was more or less desultory and informal, but all Fellows received their diplomas from the Parent Society until branch Societies began to be formed in India, when diplomas were signed by Col. Olcott and Madame Blavatsky. There were various arrangements in the issuing of diplomas until

    No formal Convention of all the Societies was ever held during the existence of the Parent body, but in India a species of gathering or “Anniversary Convention” was held as early as 1880, and thereafter annually at the end of each year. These were attended by delegates from the Indian and Ceylon Lodges and by occasional visitors from Europe and America

THE PARENT THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY had three declared Objects, known to some from the first, and formally adopted by the Society and most of the branches in the 1880’s. They were:

 I.     To form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of
         Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste,
        or color.

II.     The study of ancient and modern religions, philosophies
         and sciences, and the demonstration of the importance
        of such study; and

III.     The investigation of the unexplained laws of Nature
          and the psychical powers latent in man.’

    From the vantage-point of the twentieth century, these Objects may seem unexceptionable, but seventy-five years ago they represented almost entirely new ideas. It should be realized that Brotherhood, as a universal ideal, is now frequently spoken of chiefly because of the extensive sufferings that distinctions of race, creed and color have brought about in recent years. The Theosophical Movement sought to make universal brotherhood the basis for human relations before the wars of the twentieth century. The present interest in ancient philosophy, particularly that of the Orient, grows from recognition of the weaknesses of Western religion, which has proved incapable of uniting Christian peoples in peace, and it may be noted that theosophical books have played an important part in bringing the great scriptures of India to the attention of the West. The Third Object was equally a pioneering conception, anticipating the complex psychological problems of the present period. No great argument should be necessary to show that these objects formulated three great needs of the future, and that the Theosophical Movement, established to serve those needs, was intended as a great and beneficent force in human history.

    “It [the Society] is a brotherhood of humanity, established to make away with all and every dogmatic religion founded on dead-letter interpretation, and to teach people and every member to believe in but one impersonal God; to rely upon his (man’s) own powers; to consider himself his only savior; to learn the

    These statements, offered at the outset, showed the character of the authority claimed for the Theosophical teachings: it is the authority within each human being, his own potential powers of perception and understanding. But pending the full development of those faculties within himself, the reader or student is invited to consider the philosophical validity of the Wisdom-Religion, the analyses of history and tradition, of religious symbolism and scientific evidence of various sorts,

    The whole question of phenomena rests on the correct comprehension of old philosophies. Whither, then, should we turn, in our perplexity, but to the ancient sages, since, on the pretext of superstition, we are refused an explanation by the modern? Let us ask them what they know of genuine science and religion; not in the matter of mere details, but in all the broad conception of these twin truths—so strong in their unity, so weak when divided. Besides, we may find our profit in comparing this boasted modern science with ancient ignorance; this improved modern theology with the “Secret doctrines” of the ancient universal religion. Perhaps we may thus discover a neutral ground whence we can reach and profit by both.

    In this quest among the ancients, Madame Blavatsky turns first to Plato. She calls the Platonic philosophy “the most elaborate compend of the abstruse systems of old India,” which “can alone afford us this middle ground.” In Plato she saw the link between eastern and western thought:

    He [Plato] was, in the fullest sense of the word, the world’s interpreter. And the greatest philosopher of the pre-Christian era mirrored faithfully in his works the spiritualism of the Vedic philosophers who lived thousands of years before himself, and its metaphysical expression.

    Just as Plato had summed up the knowledge of the ancient East in his philosophy, transmitting to the Western world the accumulated wisdom of the prehistoric past, so Madame Blavatsky, also, became a transmitter of ancient teachings, “the world’s interpreter” of the nineteenth century. Starting from

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The message of Isis Unveiled is predominantly ethical, but, unlike either the precepts of contemporary religion or the moral speculations of Western philosophers, an endeavor is made in this book to correlate ethical ideas with super-physical laws of nature; to show, in short, that religion can have a basis in scientific law and fact. Starting with the interests of her age—both popular and learned—the phenomena of Spiritualism, the conflict of Science and Religion, and the researches of students of symbology and mysticism—Madame Blavatsky examined these several aspects of human experience in the light of the Theosophical teachings, drawing them together for study and review in the single perspective of a philosophy of soul. Her method, in this sense, was inductive and scientific, for Isis Unveiled rejects no fact, whether of past history or contemporary development, but it is deductive in the crucial process of relating the data of man’s moral and psychic life, individual and collective, under general laws which serve, in the Theosophic scheme, as integrating principles.

    Much of Isis Unveiled is devoted to a critique of historical and theological Christianity. The closing paragraphs of the Preface to the second volume say:

    An analysis of religious beliefs in general, this volume is in particular directed against theological Christianity, the chief opponent of free thought. It contains not one word against the pure teachings of Jesus, but unsparingly denounces their debasement into pernicious ecclesiastical systems that are ruinous to man’s faith in his immortality and his God, and subversive of all moral restraint.

    We cast our gauntlet at the dogmatic theologians who would enslave both history and science; and especially at the Vatican, whose despotic pretensions have become hateful to the greater portion of enlightened Christendom. The clergy apart, none but the logician, the investigator, the dauntless explorer should meddle with books like this. Such delvers after truth have the courage of their opinions.

    In this volume is to be found an explanation for the bitter enmity Madame Blavatsky provoked among representatives of religious orthodoxy, particularly the Roman Catholic Church. Throughout her life she was the object of vicious attacks by certain spokesmen of organized Christianity, who sought to bring her into personal disrepute and who lost no opportunity

WITH THE DEPARTURE OF Col. Olcott and Madame Blavatsky from New York on December 18, 1878, the scene of Theosophical activity shifted from the United States to India. For H.P.B., the journey was to “India and HOME!” For Olcott, it was the beginning of a great adventure—a new life in the mysterious East, where the part he would play was much more than that of a curious traveler, coming from the New World to the Old. He arrived in India already apprenticed in the service of a secret fraternity of Eastern adepts, sages held in extreme reverence by all Indians who still believed in the ancient traditions of Rishis and Mahatmas. For a Westerner, an American business man and former Army officer, to have personal contact with these august personages was an extraordinary distinction, making him unique in the eyes of many of the Indian people.

    The establishment in India of a public center of Theosophical education was an essential part of the larger scheme of the Theosophical Movement. India was the Motherland of both ancient and modern Western civilizations, and her great scriptures and traditions were indispensable source-materials for metaphysical studies and research into the original meaning of world religions. In India, too, there still existed among the people an intuitive faith in the spiritual nature of man. Hindu and Buddhist teachings afforded conceptions of moral psychology and of inner, psychic development more in harmony with the doctrines that H.P.B. intended to disclose than could be found in any other religious or philosophical system. Further, the founding of a Theosophical headquarters in India might be the means of awakening a genuine renaissance of ancient Hindu culture, by restoring old philosophic truths to recognition and reviving the devotion of modern Hindus to their ancestral religious philosophy. Finally, it was in India, or rather, in the high country to the north of the Indian peninsula included within the bounds of ancient India, or Arya-

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the Indian people to accomplish their freedom increased the native respect for Western ideas, and by the latter part of the nineteenth century the devotion of the younger Hindus to their own religious traditions was waning rapidly.

    While these tendencies affected the youth of India, the learned men of the earlier generation remained secure in the belief that their inheritance of the great treatises of Oriental religion made them superior to all others in moral philosophy. This was a habit of mind confirmed by the extensive caste system which governed the social relationships among the Hindu people, establishing “spiritual distinctions” sanctified by the usage of centuries and justified by the priestly authority of the Brahmins. There were, in the 1880’s, a total of some eighty-four sub-divisions in the Brahmanical caste alone, each with its specifications of status and rules that separated its members from other castes and subdivisions. Worst among the abuses of the caste system was “untouchability,” which for centuries barred some forty million Hindus from all contact with members of the higher castes. “Untouchability” was at last outlawed by an official act of the Constituent Assembly of India in 1947, the year in which the British Government pledged itself to relinquish control over the Indian people and to transfer all authority to a free National Government of India. The Indian National Congress had campaigned for generations against “untouchability,” but not until the added moral impetus of national freedom came to India was this inhuman practice finally abolished.

    Untouchability, child-brides, and similar degrading customs illustrate the social and religious decadence of India in the nineteenth century. There was also a characteristic passivity among the people, partially due to centuries of subjection to first the Mogul and then the British conquerors, which had weakened the will of this once free and independent race. It was widely believed, too, that in the Dark Age or Kali Yuga—a period of moral decline prophesied in the Sacred Books of the Hindus—nothing could be done to revive the spirit of the past, but that all oppressions must be suffered in weakness and patient despair. Such religious pessimism made India apathetic and gained for her the reputation of being “backward” in comparison with the vigorous and aggressive policies

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therefore, that only nine days after the landing of the Founders at Bombay, Col. Olcott received a letter from Mr. A. P. Sinnett, the editor of the Allahabad Pioneer, expressing a desire to meet them and to publish any interesting facts concerning their work in India. The Pioneer was a strong pro-Government organ, and this attention of its editor to the purposes of the Theosophical Movement brought the Society to the notice of the more cosmopolitan English residents. Mr. Sinnett’s unusual interest in Theosophy, which soon became manifest, was also the means of disabusing officials of the British Government of the notion that Madame Blavatsky was a Russian spy, and Olcott her tool.

    In December, 1879, the Founders visited the Sinnetts in Allahabad. Experiences during the six weeks of this visit convinced Sinnett that H.P.B. possessed powers unknown to ordinary persons and his interest in occultism was thereby intensified. In his first book, The Occult World,’ he tells of the character of these experiences and gives his impressions of Madame Blavatsky. Sinnett, like Olcott, was greatly affected by the ‘phenomena” performed by H.P.B. He was, however, a man of unusual intellectual capacity, as his early writings on Theosophy show, and, despite the materialistic outlook common to his generation, was able to present a fairly comprehensive account of the Theosophical metaphysics. Through Madame Blavatsky he gained contact with the personages described by her as her “occult teachers,” with whom he carried on an extensive correspondence. The first several letters received by Mr. Sinnett from one of these adepts are printed in The Occult World. The entire series of letters by the Theosophical Adepts to Mr. Sinnett and to another eminent Englishman—Allan 0. Hume, former Secretary of the Government of India—was published many years later, in 1923, in a volume called The Mahatma Letters.

    Mr. Sinnett’s Occult World, appearing in 1885, unfolded a strange story of seeming miracles to the complacent world of the nineteenth century. The book is a sober account of happenings which none of the laws of nature known to Western science could explain. Probably the most startling of the phenomena it describes is the “precipitation,” secure within the double lining of a small cushion, of a brooch belonging to

    “The ignorant, unable to grapple with the invisible operators, might some day vent their rage on the visible agents at work; the higher and educated classes would go on disbelieving, as ever, tearing you to shreds as before. In common with many, you blame us for our great secrecy. Yet we know something of human nature, for the experience of long centuries—ay, ages, has taught us. And we know that so long as science has anything to learn, and a shadow of religious dogmatism lingers in the hearts of the multitudes, the world’s prejudices have to be conquered step by step, not at a rush. . . the only salvation of the genuine proficient in occult sciences lies in the scepticism of the public: the charlatans and the jugglers are the natural shields of the adepts. The public safety is only ensured by our

It begins:
    “We will be at cross purposes in our correspondence until it has been made entirely plain that occult science has its own methods of research, as fixed and arbitrary as the methods of its antithesis, physical science, are in their way. If the latter has its dicta, so also has the former; . . . . The mysteries never were, never can be, put within the reach of the general public, not, at least, until that longed-for day when our religious philosophy becomes universal. At no time have more than a scarcely appreciable minority of men possessed Nature’s secrets, though multitudes have witnessed the practical evidences of the possibility of their possession. The adept is the rare efflorescence of a generation of inquirers; and to become one, he must obey the inward impulse of his soul, irrespective of the prudential considerations of worldly science or sagacity.”

    The writer now passes to the question of favoring Mr. Sinnett with personal instruction, in order that he may transmit the secrets of occultism to the public in an “appropriate” manner. Sinnett, in the early pages of The Occult World, shows his disapproval of Madame Blavatsky’s unconventional ways, referring to her failure to give “the British ruling classes of India” the proper attention. He speaks of her “attitude of obtrusive sympathy with the natives of the soil as compared

    Your desire is to be brought to communicate with one of us directly, without the agency of Madame Blavatsky.
Your idea would be, as I understand it, to obtain such communications, either by letters, as the present one, or by audible words, so as to be guided by one of us in the management, and principally in the instruction of the Society. You seek all this, and yet, as you say yourself, hitherto you have not found sufficient reasons to even give up your modes of life, directly hostile to such modes of communication. This is hardly reasonable. He who would lift up high the banner of mysticism and proclaim its reign near at hand must give the example to others. He must be the first to change his modes of life, and, regarding the study of the occult mysteries as the upper step in the ladder of knowledge, must loudly proclaim it as such, despite exact science and the opposition of society.

    The letter proceeds with an analysis of the motives causing Sinnett to make his proposal, which are said to be, briefly, a personal desire to know the nature of and to possess power over the occult forces in Nature; to demonstrate their existence

    “To our minds, then, these motives, sincere and worthy of every serious consideration from the worldly standpoint, appear selfish. (You have to pardon me what you might view as crudeness of language, if your desire is that which you really profess—to learn truth and get instruction from us who belong to quite a different world from the one you move in.) They are selfish, because you must be aware that the chief object of the Theosophical Society is not so much to gratify individual aspirations as to serve our fellow-men, and the real value of this term ‘selfish,’ which may jar upon your ear, has a peculiar significance with us which it cannot have with you; therefore, to begin with, you must not accept it otherwise than in the former sense. Perhaps you will better appreciate our meaning when told that in our view the highest aspirations for the welfare of humanity become tainted with selfishness, if, in the mind of the philanthropist, there lurks the shadow of a desire for self-benefit, or a tendency to do injustice, even where these exist unconsciously to himself. Yet you have ever discussed, but to put down, the idea of a Universal Brotherhood, questioned its usefulness, and advised to remodel the Theosophical Society on the principle of a college for the special study of occultism.

    These early letters of the Adepts, like all the others that were to come, leave no doubt as to the basic intent of the occult fraternity. The Adepts cared only for the great ethical ideal of human brotherhood. They would teach, assist and lend their powers of occult demonstration only to those who held the cause of brotherhood first in their hearts, and who would steadfastly labor for its realization in the world of men. These were the conditions, laid down with unending emphasis, to all who applied for instruction from the Theosophical Teachers.

    A. 0. Hume, who joined with Sinnett in suggesting the formation of a society in which they would be the leading lay figures, also received a letter which states even more forcibly the conditions of success in occult philosophy. Hume was a man of exceptional intelligence and personal discipline, but, like most Westerners, he found it difficult to understand why the teachers of H.P.B. would not meet him on his terms, in

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stead of their own. The letter to Hume is a long one, answering several questions. It begins by a consideration of the idea of a special Society, explaining what might be practicable in this direction, and welcoming the interest of so cultivated and capable an Englishman. This done, the abyss which separates occultism from Western conceptions is again described:

    You say there are few branches of science with which you do not possess more or less acquaintance, and that you believe you are doing a certain amount of good, having acquired the position to do this by long years of study. Doubtless you do; but will you permit me to sketch for you still more clearly the difference between the modes of physical (called exact often out of mere compliment) and metaphysical sciences. The latter, as you know, being incapable of verification before mixed audiences, is classed by Mr. Tyndall with the fictions of poetry. The realistic science of fact on the other hand is utterly prosaic. Now, for us, poor unknown philanthropists, no fact of either of these sciences is interesting except in the degree of its potentiality of moral results, and in the ratio of its usefulness to mankind. And what, in its proud isolation, can be more utterly indifferent to everyone and everything, or more bound to nothing but the selfish requisites for its advancement, than this materialistic science of fact? May I ask then what have the laws of Faraday, Tyndall, or others to do with philanthropy in their abstract relations with humanity, viewed as an intelligent whole? What care they for Man as an isolated atom of this great and harmonious whole, even though they may sometimes be of practical use to him? .

    “Exact experimental science has nothing to do with morality, virtue, philanthropy—therefore, can make no claim upon our help until it blends itself with metaphysics. Being but a cold classification of facts outside man, and existing before and after him, her domain of usefulness ceases for us at the outer boundary of these facts; and whatever the inferences and results for humanity from the materials acquired by her method, she little cares. .
“Were the sun, the great nourishing father of our planetary system, to hatch granite chickens out of a boulder ‘under test conditions’ to-morrow, they (the men of science) would accept it as a scientific fact without wasting a regret that the fowls were not alive so as to feed the hungry and the starving. But let a shaberon cross the Himalayas in a time of famine and multiply sacks of rice for the perishing multitudes—as he could—and your magistrates and collectors would probably lodge him in jail to make him confess what granary he had robbed. This is exact science and your realistic world. And though, as you say, you

    THE GREATEST EVENT of Madame Blavatsky’s stay in India, so far as the future work of the Movement was concerned, was the starting of her magazine, The Theosophist, in October, 1879. This publication became a primary record of the Theosophical literature, printing many basic articles on both the philosophy and the educational activities of theosophists. The early issues at once established the editorial tone which was to pervade the magazine so long as H.P.B. remained in India. The first issue contains four articles giving categorical statements of the nature and purposes of the Theosophical Movement. “What Is Theosophy?”—which follows the opening editorial—makes clear that Theosophy is neither a new “revelation” nor a man-made creed, but, fundamentally, a spirit of impartial inquiry moving from philosophical first principles which are to be found in every great religion and metaphysical system. Theosophy, however, is shown to be much more than a merely speculative inquiry: the profound conceptions of Vedic philosophy and of Buddhism, the teachings of the Egyptians hierophants, of Pythagoras and Plato, the Neoplatonic system, Gnostic mysticism, the metaphysical ideas of Leibniz and Spinoza, Hegel and Fichte, as well as Kabalistic doctrines and the medieval teachings of alchemical regeneration, and finally, the transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson, are all related in this article and considered as either direct or indirect expressions of “the archaic Wisdom-Religion.” Having outlined these various historical sources of Theosophy, Madame Blavatsky adds:

    Every Theosophist, then, holding to a theory of Deity “which has not revelation, but an inspiration of his own for its basis,” may accept any of the above definitions or belong to any of these religions, and yet remain strictly within the boundaries of Theosophy. For the latter is belief in the Deity as the ALL, the source of all existence, the infinite that cannot be either comprehended or known, the universe alone revealing It, or, as some prefer it, Him, thus giving a sex to that, to anthropomorphize which is blasphemy.

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Hartmann called a “blackmailing letter,” the Coulombs were compelled to leave.

    The resentful couple went at once to the missionaries and were received with open arms. They were given money and their living was provided them. In the ensuing three months, plans were perfected for an assault intended once and for all to destroy the reputation of Madame Blavatsky, and, as a result, to ruin the Theosophical Society. The purpose of the Coulombs became plain when the September, 1884, issue of the Christian College Magazine began a series of articles containing letters alleged to have been written by Madame Blavatsky to Madame Coulomb. The obvious intent in publishing these letters was to make H.P.B. appear a conscienceless swindler, and her phenomena, frauds.

    The immediate effect of the publication of Madame Coulomb’s charges in the Christian College Magazine was to touch off the resentments of every orthodoxy in both India and England which had reason to dislike the idol-smashing tendency of the Theosophical Movement and which feared the undogmatic philosophical appeal of Theosophy. All possible capital was made of the Coulomb accusations, with, of course, a renewal of every old and exploded charge against Madame Blavatsky, her teachers, and the Theosophical Society. The Christen sects, the Spiritualist publications, the daily press which welcomed any sensation as “copy,” all exploited the “revelation” of the missionary magazine.

    When news of the attack reached Madame Blavatsky in England, she at once took steps to protect the good name of the Society by offering her resignation as Corresponding Secretary to Col. Olcott. Because of the pressure from leading English members, he refused to accept it. H.P.B. then wrote the following letter, which appeared in the London Times for October :

    Sir,—With reference to the alleged exposure at Madras of a dishonourable conspiracy between myself and two persons of the name of Coulomb to deceive the public with occult phenomena, I have to say that the letters purporting to have been written by me are certainly not mine. Sentences here and there I recognise, taken from old notes of mine on different matters, but they are mingled with interpolations that entirely pervert their meaning. With these exceptions the whole of the letters are a fabrication.

H.P.B. place the matter in the hands of the Convention and abide by its decision, threatening, if this were not done, that he and others would abandon the Society. Deserted by her only friends, H.P.B. agreed. Accordingly, the Convention appointed a Committee which unanimously reported:
    Resolved—That the letters published in the Christian College Magazine under the heading “Collapse of Koot Hoomi” are only a pretext to injure the cause of Theosophy; and as these letters necessarily appear absurd to those who are acquainted with our philosophy and facts, and as those who are not acquainted with those facts could not have their opinion changed, even by a judicial verdict given in favour of Madame Blavatsky, therefore it is the unanimous opinion of this Committee that Madame Blavatsky should not prosecute her defamers in a Court of Law.
    This report, unanimously adopted by the Convention, was received by the Indian and sectarian press with prolonged jeers. The great majority of public journals and intelligent observers considered it to be a tacit admission by Theosophists that the Coulomb charges were true.
    The blow was well-nigh mortal to the body of H.P.B. During the succeeding three months she was rarely able to leave her bed. Finally, toward the end of March, yielding to the solicitations of the few who still remained devotedly loyal to her, she prepared to leave India and go to Europe. On March 21 she once more tendered her resignation as Corresponding Secretary, closing her letter with these words:
 
   I leave with you, one and all, and to every one of my friends and sympathizers, my loving farewell. Should this be my last word, I would implore you all, as you have regard for the welfare of mankind and your own Karma, to be true to the Society and not to permit it to be overthrown by the enemy. Fraternally and ever yours—in life or death.
                                                                                                                                        H. P. Blavatsky.
 
   Her resignation was accepted by the Council with fulsome compliments, even as the cowardly action of the Convention and its Committee had been accompanied with brave words.
    The failure of her closest associates in India to give H.P.B. anything more than nominal support was the crucial disaster. Prejudiced and vindictive attacks from without she was used to, but against betrayal from within, covered over with verbal solicitude, she had no defense. The behavior of Olcott, Sinnett, and the Indian theosophists had placed the Society in a

TODAY, THE LONDON Society for Psychical Research is a well-known and respected body, with records of its investigations more voluminous than any other research organization in the field. Less known is the fact that it was founded in 1882 by a group which included several prominent members of the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society. The latter were Prof. F. W. H. Myers, W. Stainton Moses—who wrote under the pseudonym of “M. A. (Oxon) ”—and C. C. Massey. It is evident that these founders of the Society for Psychical Research had been more attracted to Theosophy by its connection with psychical phenomena than by the ethical principles which were the primary consideration of H. P. Blavatsky.
    In any event, the preliminary announcement of the new Society declared that “the present is an opportune time for making an organized and systematic attempt to investigate that large group of debatable phenomena designated by such terms as mesmeric, psychical, and Spiritualistic.” Committees were to be appointed to investigate and report upon such subjects as telepathy, hypnotism, trance, clairvoyance, sensitives, apparitions, etc. The announcement stated that “the aim of the Society will be to approach these various problems without prejudice or prepossession of any kind, and in the same spirit of exact and unimpassioned inquiry which has enabled science to solve so many problems, once not less obscure nor less hotly debated.” The new Society almost immediately attracted to its Fellowship some hundreds of men and women of reputation and ability in their several fields. By 1884 the Society had made numerous investigations, had begun publishing its Proceedings, and was established in the public confidence as a serious scientific body.
    The announcement of the formation of the London Society for Psychical Research received a warm welcome in the Theosophist. An editorial called attention to the similarity of the

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duty, as investigators, in examining the evidence for Theosophic marvels, to suppose the possibility of a deliberate combination to deceive on the part of certain Theosophists. We cannot regard this possibility as excluded by the fact that we find no reason to attribute to any of the persons whose evidence we have to consider, any vulgar or sordid motive for such combination.
    But in spite of its suspicions, its doubts, fears and mental reservations, occasioned by ignorance of the laws governing metaphysical phenomena; by the absolute refusal of H.P.B. to disclose the processes of practical Occultism; by the atmosphere of mystery surrounding the whole subject of the hidden “Brothers” and their powers; by the charges of fraud laid by the Coulombs at the door of H.P.B.; by the undisclosed “evidence privately brought before us by Mr. C. C. Massey”—in spite of all these disturbing elements, the testimony amassed by the Committee was so absolutely overwhelming as to the fact of the alleged phenomena that the Committee found itself compelled to make certain admissions:
    It is obvious that if we could account for all the phenomena described by the mere assumption of clever conjuring on the part of Madame Blavatsky and the Coulombs, assisted by any number of Hindu servants, we could hardly, under present circumstances, regard ourselves as having adequate ground for further inquiry. But this assumption would by no means meet the case. The statements of the Coulombs implicate no one in the alleged fraud except Madame Blavatsky. The other Theosophists, according to them, are all dupes. Now the evidence given in the Appendix in our opinion renders it impossible to avoid one or other of two alternative conclusions: Either that some of the phenomena recorded are genuine, or that other persons of good standing in society, and with characters to lose, have taken part in deliberate imposture.
    Accordingly, the Committee expressed these conclusions:
    On the whole, however (though with some serious reserves), it seems undeniable that there is a prima facie case, for some part at least of the claim made, which, at the point which the investigations of the Society of Psychical Research have now reached, cannot, with consistency, be ignored.
    The Committee decided to send one of its members to India to investigate the charges made by the Coulombs, to interview the numerous witnesses to phenomena testified to by Hindus and Europeans in India, and to report on the results of such examination. Mr. Richard Hodgson was the member chosen.

purposes, with which we are not now concerned.” In the final report the statement is made: “The Theosophical Society was founded ostensibly for certain philanthropic and literary purposes . . . with these doctrines (or so-called “Wisdom-Religion”) the Committee have, of course, no concern.”
    It should be understood in connection with this use of the word “ostensibly” that not a shred of evidence is introduced to show that the Theosophical Society ever had any other objects than its proclaimed ones.
    The Committee took enough note of the Theosophical doctrines to recognize their extensive implications:
    The teaching . . . comprises a cosmogony, a philosophy, a religion. With the value of this teaching per se we are not at present concerned. But it is obvious that were it widely accepted a great change would be induced in human thought in almost every department, To take one point only, the spiritual and intellectual relationship of East to West would be for the time in great measure reversed. “Ex oriente lux” would be more than a metaphor and a memory; it would be the expression of actual contemporary fact. (Italics added.)
    Why was the Committee “not concerned” with the value of this teaching? Was it because the West or the Committee already possessed abundant knowledge as to the existence of superphysical phenomena and the laws and processes by which such phenomena are produced? Here is what was proclaimed in the prospectus of the S.P.R. in 1882:
    The founders of this Society fully recognize the exceptional difficulties which surround this branch of research; but they evertheless hope that by patient and systematic effort some results of permanent value may be attained.
    And the Committee itself declares in the preliminary report that the evidence for these phenomena “ is of a kind which it is peculiarly difficult to disentangle or to evaluate. The claims advanced are so enormous, and the lines of testimony converge and inosculate in a manner so perplexing that it is almost equally hard to say what statements are to be accepted, and what inferences as to other statements are to be drawn from the acceptance of any.”
    To have concerned itself seriously with Madame Blavatsky’s teachings, to have investigated and studied the principles and processes she inculcated would have called for the same self-

MADAME BLAVATSKY sailed from India on March 30, 1885. She was seriously ill and had to be carried on board the vessel. Accompanied by her physician and an attendant she voyaged to Naples, where she remained for several months. In August she went to Wurzburg, Germany, where she was visited and sustained by the Gebhards, devoted admirers living nearby in Elberfeld, whom she had met during a visit to Europe the year before. H.P.B. was later joined in Wurzburg by the Countess Wachtmeister, widow of the late Swedish Ambassador to England, who had become a member of the London Lodge in 1884. On her way to Italy in the summer of 1885, the Countess had stopped at Elberfeld to spend some time with the Gebhards, and learning of H.P.B.'s illness and isolation in Wurzburg, went to see her. What she saw and felt caused her to remain, and to become the companion, secretary, friend and voluntary servant of H.P.B. Here, in Wurzburg, where she lived for nearly a year, Madame Blavatsky began the enormous task of writing The Secret Doctrine, which was to be the systematic treatise of the Theosophical teachings.
    In May, 1886, H.P.B. was ordered by physicians to find a more favorable climate, if she were to regain her health. Her next place of residence was Ostend, Belgium, where, less than a year later, she nearly died. In the spring of 1887 she yielded to the pleas of a small group of English students, who brought her to England. She passed the summer in a small cottage in Norwood, and in the autumn was installed in the house at 17 Lansdowne Road, Holland Park, West, where she lived until her death. These last five years of H.P.B.’s life were spent in the kindly care of English theosophists who shared her household and gave her the assistance she needed to complete The Secret Doctrine.
    With H.P.B. no longer in India, the Movement there began to sink to the level of faint-heartedness and timidity which had characterized the Society’s “defense” against the attack

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friendly feeling spring up and banish these hatreds, evil suspicions, ill feelings, and mutual ignorance.
    “Ten years have passed and what do we see? Taking the points seriatim we find—that throughout India unity and brotherhood have replaced the old disunity; one hundred and twenty-five Branches of our Society have sprung up in India alone, each a nucleus of our idea of fraternity, a centre of religious and social unity. Their membership embraces representatives of all the better castes and all Hindu sects, and a majority are of that class of hereditary savants and philosophers, the Brahmans, to pervert whom to Christianity has been the futile struggle of the Missionary and the self- appointed task of that high-class forlorn hope, the Oxford and Cambridge Missions. The President of our Society, Col. Olcott, has traversed the whole of India several times, upon invitation, addressing vast crowds upon theosophic themes and sowing the seed from which, in time, will be garnered the full harvest of our evangel of brotherhood and mutual dependence.
    The growth of this kindly feeling has been proven in a variety of ways: first, in the unprecedented gathering of races, castes, and sects in the annual Conventions of the Theosophical Society: second, in the rapid growth of a theosophical literature advocating our altruistic views, in the founding of various journals and magazines in several languages, and in the rapid cessation of sectarian controversies; third, in the sudden birth and phenomenally rapid growth of the patriotic movement which is centralized in the organisation called the Indian National Congress. This remarkable political body was planned by certain of our Anglo-Indian and Hindu members after the model and on the lines of the Theosophical Society, and has from the first been directed by our own colleagues; men among the most influential in the Indian Empire. At the same time, there is no connection whatever, barring that through the personalities of individuals, between the Congress and its mother body, our Society. It would never have come into existence, in all probability, if Col. Olcott had suffered himself to be tempted into the side paths of human brotherhood, politics, social reforms, etc., as many have wanted him to do. We aroused the dormant spirit and

THE REAL BEGINNING of the work of the Theosophical Movement in the United States came in 1886, when William Q. Judge established The Path, an independent Theosophical magazine. Until this time, not much had been accomplished in the way of growth of the Society in America. Even before the departure of Olcott and H.P.B. for India, as early as the close of 1876, as Olcott says, “The Theosophical Society as a body was comparatively inactive: its By-laws became a dead letter, its meetings almost ceased.” When the journey of the two Founders to India was decided upon, General Abner Doubleday was chosen to serve as the President in America, pro tem., and Judge was made Recording Secretary.
    While Judge kept in close contact with both H.P.B. and Olcott through correspondence, there was little if any organizational activity for the next several years. The difficulties confronting him during this period are illustrated by a biographical passage written by Mrs. Archibald Keightley and included by her in the second volume of Letters That Have Helped Me. It was a time when Madame Blavatsky—she, who was then the one great exponent, had left the field, and the curiosity and interest excited by her original and striking mission had died down. The T. S. was henceforth to subsist on its philosophical basis, and this, after long years of toil and unyielding persistence, was the point attained by Mr. Judge. From his twenty-third year until his death, his best efforts and all the fiery energies of his undaunted soul were given to this Work. We have a word picture of him, opening meetings, reading a chapter of the Bhagaz’ad Gila, entering the Minutes, and carrying on all the details of the same, as if he were not the only person present; and this he did, time after time, determined to have a society.
    In these early days, Mr. Judge was a young practicing lawyer who had to give much of his time to earning a living. He had married in 1874, shortly before meeting H.P.B. There was only one child, a girl, who died while very young. Business affairs took him to South America in 1876, where he con-

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Section of the General Council of the Theosophical Society, but deferred the question of adopting a formal constitution and laws until some other date when a more complete representation could be secured.” In 1887 a second meeting was held and the Constitution of the American Section was regularly adopted by instructed delegates.
   At the time of the 1886 meeting of the Board of Control, there were twelve branches of the Theosophical Society in the United States. These were in Rochester, Chicago, Boston, MaIden (Mass.), Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, St. Louis, San Francisco, Washington, D. C., and two in New York. The members of these branches made up a total of 264. By the 1887 Convention, held in New York City, there were still twelve branches, but the membership had increased to 302. At the second annual convention of the American Section—its first large meeting—in Chicago, April 22 and 23, 1888, Mr. Judge, who was General Secretary, reported the addition of ten new branches, and an aggregate membership of about 460. This extraordinary rate of the Society’s growth in America continued for a number of years. By 1896, there were 103 branches in the United States.
    The first number of the Path appeared in April, 1886. Its opening editorial struck the keynote of the policy it was to maintain for ten years, under the editorship of Mr. Judge. He began by explaining that the magazine was not the official organ of the Theosophical Society, but an independent journal “the impulse for which arose directly from Theosophical teachings and literature.” The magazine’s founders, he said, have resolved to try on the one hand to point out to their fellows a Path in which they have found hope for man, and on the other to investigate all systems of ethics and philosophy claiming to lead directly to such a path, regardless of the possibility that the highway may, after all, be in another direction from the one in which they are looking. From their present standpoint it appears to them that the true path lies in the way pointed out by our Aryan forefathers, philosophers, and sages, whose light is still shining brightly, albeit that this is now Kali Yuga, or the age of darkness.
    The editorial concludes:
    The very first step in true mysticism and true occultism is to try to apprehend the meaning of Universal Brotherhood, with-

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self-effacing administrator who knew how to help other men to develop their talents and take responsibilities. He wrote for the Path under a variety of pseudonyms, thus hiding from the public his large personal part in that publication, although he signed with his own name all decisive statements of policy for which individual responsibility ought to be assumed.
    His knowledge of Theosophy emerged in the pages of the Path in the form of endlessly varied applications of the philosophy. His method is suggestive rather than dogmatic. Everything he wrote of a metaphysical nature can be found supported, directly or indirectly, in the works of Madame Blavatsky. He attempted no new “revelation,” but illustrated in his own works the ideal use of the concepts of the Theosophical teachings. At the conclusion of the first volume of the Path, he presented a view of the law of cycles showing that, to him, this law was no abstraction, but a principle having direct bearing on the work of the Movement and on the psychological and moral needs of the human race at this time. He wrote:
     The “Christian” nations have dazzled themselves with the baneful glitter of material progress. They are not the peoples who will furnish the clearest clues to the Path. A few short years and they will have abandoned the systems now held so dear, because their mad rush to the perfection of their civilization will give them control over now undreamed of forces. Then will come the moment when they must choose which of two kinds of fruit they will take.
     In the year just passing we have been cheered by much encouragement from without and within. Theosophy has grown not only in ten years, but during the year past. A new age is not far away. The huge, unwieldy flower of the 19th century civilization, has almost fully bloomed, and preparation must be made for the wonderful new flower which is to rise from the old. We have not pinned our faith on Vedas nor Christian scriptures, nor desired any others to do so. All our devotion to Aryan literature and philosophy arises from a belief that the millions of minds who have trodden weary steps before ours, left a path which might be followed with profit, yet with discrimination. For we implicitly believe that in this curve of the cycle, the final authority is the man himself. In former times the disclosed Vedas, and later, the teachings of the great Buddha, were the right authority, in whose authoritative teachings and enjoined practices were found the necessary steps to raise Man to an upright position. But the grand clock of the Universe

123 —————————————————————— JUDGE’S HELPERS

“Hiraj.” His personal affection for Mr. Judge made him a loyal worker throughout the former’s life, but after Judge died, Dr. Buck was confused by the various claims to “spiritual authority” and became a follower of “TK,” an “occult” writer with pretensions to higher Masonic knowledge.
    Another worker was Julia Campbell VerPlanck, later Mrs. Archibald Keightley, who was probably more help to Judge than any one else in getting out the Path. She wrote for the Path under the names of “Julius,” “August Waldensee,” and “Jasper Niemand.” She used the latter name as editor of the volume of Mr. Judge’s letters to her, which she published as Letters That Have Helped Me.
    Alexander Fullerton, an Episcopalian clergyman who had been Mrs. VerPlanck’s pastor, was attracted to Theosophy by her and gave up his position in the church, in 1890 he became a member of the Council of the American Section of the T. S. He was well educated, could write and speak, and his offer of services at the busy headquarters of the General Secretary was gladly accepted. Mr. Fullerton soon became known as Mr. Judge’s right-hand man. He contributed many articles to the Path, edited the Forum—a small periodical devoted to Theosophical questions and answers—and attended to much of the correspondence coming to the Path editorial office and the headquarters of the American Section. Another prominent American worker was Jerome A. Anderson, active on the Pacific Coast, who was author of elementary books on Reincarnation and Karma, Immortality, and Septenary Man. Mr. Anderson was a frequent contributor to the pages of the New Californian, a Theosophical monthly founded in Los Angeles in 1891. The editor of this magazine, Miss Louise A. Off, was among the most active members on the Pacific Coast, writing on Theosophical subjects for the California newspapers as well as in the New Californian. She also conducted in her home well-attended weekly meetings for the discussion of Theosophy. Although Miss Off was not physically strong, having to discontinue publication of the magazine after two volumes were completed, she worked strenuously for Theosophy and continued to write in the service of the Movement until her death in 1895.

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unique value of the Transactions is a long appendix on the subject of Dreams, in which the psychology of dreaming is explained according to the Theosophical philosophy.
    Sheltered, cared for, and aided in her work by her English friends, H.P.B. measurably regained strength, with which she poured new energy into the Theosophical Movement. From May, 1887, she had but four years more to live, but these were years of extraordinary industry and fruitfulness for the Theosophic cause. During this period she completed and published The Secret Doctrine, wrote The Key to Theosophy, The Voice of the Silence, and the Theosophical Glossary. The first issue of Lucifer appeared September 15, 1887. This “Theosophical Monthly” was edited by Madame Blavatsky with the assistance of Mabel Collins, and in it were printed a number of important editorials dealing with contemporary events and social conditions. For Lucifer, H.P.B. wrote her most challenging cornmentaries on modern civilization. Her contributions to the Theosophist had been largely concerned with the philosophy itself and the work of the Movement. Now, in Lucifer, her editorial articles carried the struggle of the Theosophical Movement into “enemy” territory, for they amounted to direct challenges to the bigotry of established religion and were calculated to shock the complacency of the well-to-do classes into an awareness of the moral contradictions in their lives.
    The title of he magazine was alone sufficient to arouse adverse comment, even before the first issue appeared, giving H.P.B. opportunity to expose the identification of “Lucifer” with the “Evil One” as a theological fallacy. The opening editorial provided this explanation:
    Now, the first and most important, if not the sole object of the magazine, is expressed in the line from the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, on its title page. It is to bring light to “the hidden things of darkness” (iv.5); to show in their true aspect and their original real meaning things and names, men and their doings and customs; it is finally to fight prejudice, hypocrisy and shams in every nation, in every class of Society, as in every department of life.      The task is a laborious one but it is neither impracticable nor useless, if even as an experiment.
    Thus, for an attempt of such nature, no better title could ever be found than the one chosen. “Lucifer” is the pale morning-star, the precursor of the full blaze of the noon-day sun— the “Eosphoros” of the Greeks. It shines timidly at dawn to

131 ————————————————————THE FUNCTION OF “LUCIFER”

 

    In December, the fourth number of Lucifer, H.P.B. printed an open letter (written by a contributor) to the Archbishop of Canterbury, examining the pretensions of organized Christianity and inviting the Lord Primate of England to reply. This editorial letter gave evidence to show that “in almost every point the doctrines of the churches and the practices of Christians are in direct opposition to the teachings of Jesus.” The Archbishop remained silent, but correspondence elicited by the open letter indicated widespread approval and admiration for the bold course adopted by Lucifer. Fifteen thousand reprints of the article were issued to give general circulation to this challenge to organized religion in England. As a result of the vigorous policy of its editor, Lucifer soon gained circulation among theosophists and others, in both England and the United States. Its finances, however, remained uncertain until a special appeal for help was made. In 1891, less than a month before her death, H.P.B. wrote to the American theosophists thanking them for their support:
    The mention of Lucifer reminds me that the now assured position of that magazine is very largely due to the help rendered at a critical moment by the American Fellows. As my one absolutely unfettered medium of communication with Theosophists all over the World, its continuance was of grave importance to the whole Society. In its pages, month by month, I give such public teaching as is possible on Theosophical doctrines and so carry on the most important of our Theosophical work.
    The vitality brought to the Movement by Lucifer was the climax of developments in Europe that had been under way since H.P.B. left India. Her presence on the Continent resulted in a revival of courage, confidence and action on the part of those who had remained steadfast during the Coulomb charges, the S.P.R. investigation and report, and the attacks on H.P.B.

136————————————————————THE THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT

part an exposition of hitherto secret teachings, Madame Blavatsky employed a title that described precisely the book she had written.
By the year 1888, the conception of secret or esoteric teachings was by no means new to members of the Theosophical Society. In the revised Rules and By-Laws published in the Theosophist for April, 1880, it was announced that “The Society consists of three sections”— The highest or First Section is composed exclusively of proficients or initiates in Esoteric Science and Philosophy, who take a deep interest in the Society’s affairs.
    The Second Section embraces such Theosophists as have proved by their fidelity, zeal, and courage, and their devotion to the Society, that they have become able to regard all men as equally their brothers, irrespective of caste, colour, race, or creed; and who are ready to defend the life or honour of a brother Theosophist even at the risk of their own lives.
    The administration of the superior Sections need not be dealt with at present in a code of rules laid before the public. No responsibilities, connected with these superior grades, are incurred by persons who merely desire ordinary membership of the third class.
    The Third is the Section of Probationers. All new Fellows are on probation, until their purpose to remain in the Society has become fixed, their usefulness shown, and their ability to conquer evil habits and unwarrantable prejudices demonstrated. In the years following 1880, H.P.B. printed in the Theosophist several articles which described the qualifications for discipleship and set forth the laws of accelerated spiritual evolution to which all disciples must conform. Long known in India, the term “chela” gradually became familiar to European and American theosophists, as indicating the special relationship existing between the aspirant to occult knowledge and his adept teacher. An early discussion of this subject, “Chelas and Lay Chelas,” provided students with definitions and amplifications:
A “Chela,” ... is one who has offered himself or herself as a pupil to learn practically the “hidden mysteries of Nature and the psychical powers latent in man.” The spiritual teacher to whom he proposes his candidature is called in India a Guru. and the real Guru is always an Adept in the Occult Science. A man of profound knowledge, exoteric and esoteric, especially the latter; and one who has brought his carnal nature under sub-

142————————————————————THE THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT
    It is important for the reader to clarify his own view of this question, for the reason that, after the death of H.P.B. serious differences arose between Olcott and Judge, ending, finally, in a split in the Society. The basis for understanding this phase of Theosophical history lies in an extended investigation of the contributions to and influence upon the Theosophical Movement of both Olcott and Judge. Judge, for example, was the one whom H.P.B. called upon to assist her in the formation of the Esoteric Section. She had written to Olcott in July, 1886, from Ostend, recommending that such a step be taken in India. “You ought,” she said to him, “to form an inner occult group among yourselves. I tell you, Olcott, without the Mahatma and occult element you will not have such devoted fellows as . . . Damodar and a few others.” Olcott, however, ignored this advice.
    Although, a year after the formation of the E.S., H.P.B. appointed Olcott as her “confidential agent and sole official representative of the Esoteric Section for Asiatic countries,” he remained apart in spirit from the esoteric aspect of the Movement. In Old Diary Leaves, Fourth Series, Olcott ungraciously explained his reason for making the official announcement of the E.S. read that H.P.B. is “solely responsible to the members for results.” “The reason,” he said, “for my throwing the whole responsibility for results upon H.P.B. was that she had already made one failure in this direction at Adyar in 1884, when she, with T. Subba Rao, Oakley, Damodar, and others, tried to organize a secret class or group, whose members were to have been brought more closely into relations with the Masters, but which failed, and I did not care to be responsible for the fulfilment of any special engagements she might make with the new set of students she was now gathering about her, in her disturbed state of mind.” He went on to say that he had helped H.P.B. prepare some of her occult teachings, and that when he found those who entered the E.S. “were satisfied with what they were getting,” he “took a more decided stand in the matter....” His personal attitude, throughout, however, was that of a reluctant participant, chiefly concerned with guarding the exoteric Society against “undue influence” from the members of the Esoteric Section.

BY 1889, despite the numerous obstacles in its path, the Theosophical Movement had gained such headway that the word “Theosophy” was part of the vocabulary of every intelligent person. The Theosophical Society was established in every civilized country and in every large city. The work was expanding in both England and America, and three Theosophical magazines provided ample material for reading and study. It was during this and the following year that Madame Blavatsky sustained another vicious attack upon her character.
    On May 11, 1889, the Religio-Philosophical Journal, a leading Spiritualist publication of Chicago, printed a letter from Prof. Elliott Coues embodying a letter to him from Miss Mabel Collins, the young woman in whose house H.P.B. lived upon first arriving in England in 1887. The Coues-Collins letters, and other communications from the same source in later issues of the Religio-Philosophical Journal, made grave charges against H.P.B. The gist of Miss Collins’ claim was that she had been persuaded by H.P.B. to write Prof. Coues that one of the Theosophical adepts had dictated the text of Light on the Path to her. She now denied this to be the fact and told Coues that her original statement had been made “merely to please” Madame Blavatsky. In brief, Mabel Collins sought to damage H.P.B.’s reputation by exactly the same means as those adopted by Madame Coulomb—by “confessing” that she had collaborated with H.P.B. in a Theosophical “hoax.”
    Elliot Coues, who used Miss Collins in his attempted exposé, was a man of some standing in scientific and literary circles. His education and cultivation were sufficient to secure him an invitation to edit that portion of the Century Dictionary dealing with his specialties. His multifarious interests led him, early in the 80’s, to conduct psychic experiments, and he soon became a member of the London Society for Psychical Research. While in London during the summer of 1884, he met

146———————————————————— THE THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT

me to say to you for the last time that no bitterest enemy of mine has ever misunderstood me as you do
    In May, after his hopes for the Presidency of the American Section had been dashed, Coues gave his letter containing Mabel Collins’ “confession” to the Religio-Philosophical Journal. The June 1 issue contained additional correspondence attacking H.P.B. In England, a similar campaign raged, the Spiritualist journal, Light, repeating the charges first published in the United States. Prof. Coues also found an ally in a renegade theosophist, Michael Angelo Lane, who had been exposed as a carrier of slanderous tales about Madame Blavatsky.
    Coues based his charges against H.P.B. on an unsigned and undated note from Mabel Collins which he claimed she sent him in 1885, in response to his inquiry to her concerning the authorship of Light on the Path. This note, which Coues published in the Religio-Philosophical Journal for June 1, read as follows:
    The writer of “The Gates of Gold” is Mabel Collins, who had it as well as “Light on the Path” and the “Idyll of the White Lotus” dictated to her by one of the adepts of the group which through Madame Blavatsky first communicated with the Western world. The name of this inspirer cannot be given, as the personal names of the Masters have already been sufficiently desecrated.
    Prof. Coues asserted that after receiving this answer to his question on Light on the Path, he had no further word from Miss Collins until May 2, 1889, when her letter “recanting” the above explanation arrived. With her cabled permission to publish this second letter, Coues rushed into print in the Religio, thinking he had proved H.P.B. a fraud.
    Actually, he only convicted himself of slandering H.P.B., since she had refused to further his ambition to be President of the American Section of the Society. In saying that he had received the above brief note from Mabel Collins in 1885, he inadvertently revealed that he was “building a case” against H.P.B., for The Gates of Gold was not written until 1826, and was published early in 1887. The Idyll of the White Lotus was written before Mabel Collins ever met H.P.B., and Miss Collins had told several persons how it had been “inspired.” The first edition of the Idyll was published with the dedica-

155—————————————————————THE “SUN’S” RETRACTION

the Coues-Collins attack and the Sun case, for they cover every accusation ever directed at H.P.Blavatsky; and they constitute the only case where the charges were made directly, and by a responsible channel. The outcome of the case constitutes an absolute vindication of H.P.B. and an equally emphatic exposure of the bad faith or the ignorance of those who have since repeated those slanders. Yet years later one and another of the Coues-Collins-Sun charges have been repeated and have gained very wide publicity because of the supposed high character of the parties making them, for example, by “Margot Tennant” (wife of Herbert Asquith, ex—Prime Minister of Great Britain, in her “Intimate Diary”), and by the late Count Witte, for many years one of the leading Ministers of the Russian Empire under the regime of the last Czar. Count Witte was a cousin of H.P.B., but as he was very much her junior, he saw her but a few times when a mere boy. In his published “Memoirs” the old charges of immorality first directly made by Coues and the Sun are circumstantially repeated. He does not profess to speak from knowledge, but for the same inscrutable reasons that have prompted so many others, does not hesitate to repeat these abominable calumnies at second-hand. The outcome of the Sun case gives the lie to the Witte slanders upon the dead. Students may be interested to know that Count Witte’s own mother, a devoted member of the orthodox Greek Catholic Church, remained to her dying day the warm friend and champion of H.P.B. Vile as must be considered the characters of those who originate or circulate unverified base charges against the living, they are respectable in comparison with those who continue to revile the defenseless dead.
After the battle in the Sun and its sequence, Dr. Coues fled ingloriously from the field; his Gnostic society melted away like a shadow, his prestige waned, and he died in obscurity in 1899.

IN MAY, 1889, the month in which Prof. Coues launched his public attack on Madame Blavatsky, the society gained a new member who was destined to dominate its future history for many years. This new member was Annie Besant, already famous throughout England as a crusader for Secularism and Free thought. Mrs. Besant became a socialist in 1885, thereafter dividing her energies between the Socialist and Free-thought causes. She was by this time an accomplished speaker and a writer, well-known and respected in liberal circles. During the next few years, she began to have doubts as to the philosophic sufficiency of materialism. She read A. P. Sinnett’s Occult World and was impressed by the larger conceptions of natural law contained in this work. Then, early in 1889, Mr. William T. Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, gave her the two large volumes of The Secret Doctrine to review. The illumination she found in this work stirred her deeply. She said later of this experience:
    I was dazzled, blinded by the light in which disjointed facts were seen as parts of a mighty whole, and all my puzzles, riddles, problems, seemed to disappear. The effect was partially illusory in one sense, in that they all had to be slowly unravelled later, the brain gradually assimilating that which the swift intuition had grasped as truth. But the light had been seen, and in that flash of illumination I knew that the weary search was over and the very Truth was found.
    Mrs. Besant secured an introduction to Madame Blavatsky through Mr. Stead, and with Herbert Burrows, a Socialist colleague, as her companion, she called at 17 Lansdowne Road. She soon went a second time, requesting information about the Theosophical Society. H.P.B. asked her: “Have you read the report about me of the Society for Psychical Research?” . . . “Go and read it, and if, after reading it, you come back—well.” Mrs. Besant was not deterred in her interest in Theosophy by Hodgson’s report. On the contrary, she found its allegations “incredible” and joined the Society at once. She then returned to 17 Lansdowne Road, offering

157———————————————————MRS. BESANT JOINS THE T. S.

herself as worker for Theosophy and pupil to Madame Blavatsky. This was on May 10, 1889, just two years before H.P.B.’s death.
Mrs. Besant became a member of H.P.B’s household, was admitted to the Esoteric Section, and was made co-editor of Lucifer. Within a few months, her reputation, her ardor, and her intellectual abilities made her the right hand of H.P.B. In the eyes of the world and of most members of the Society, she was, next to Madame Blavatsky, by far the most capable person in the Society. It was largely through the efforts of Mrs. Besant that the movement to establish H.P.B. in charge of an autonomous Society in Europe was successful in 1890, thus freeing the English and Continental members from Olcott’s “political” control.
    Early in 1890, difficulties had arisen in the Paris Branch of the Society, and Olcott intervened to “settle” the dispute. The various European Lodges, the English branches and numerous unattached Fellows in Britain and on the Continent bombarded H.P.B. with letters, resolutions and petitions to clear the situation once and for all from any further “orders” from Adyar. On July 2, 1890, the Council of the British Section held an extraordinary session with Mrs. Besant in the chair. After full discussion, “it was proposed that a requisition, embodying the following views, be drawn up and addressed to the President of the Society”:
    The Continental Lodges and unattached members having made an appeal to H.P.B. that they may place themselves directly under her authority, the British Section joins in their demand that the constitutional powers at present exercised by Colonel H. S. Olcott in Europe, shall be transferred to H.P.B. and her Advisory Council, already appointed to exercise part of such functions in the United Kingdom.
    With typical circumlocution, Olcott printed in the Supplement to the Theosophist for August, 1890, a “cancellation” of this resolution of the British section, as “a usurpation of the Presidential prerogative,” but published also an order conforming with H.P.B’s cabled request that he accept the decision of the resolution. In Lucifer for September, 1890, H.P.B. announced her new responsibilities, assumed “in obedience to the almost unanimous voice of the Fellows of the Theosophical Society in Europe,” and added that she would

 167————————————————————COL. OLCOTT ON “IDOLATRY”

natural impulse of inchoate gratitude on the part of the rank and file of the membership toward H.P.B. gained articulate expression in Mrs. Besant’s affirmations of the status of H.P.B. Those who before had belittled publicly and privately the authoritative character of H.P.B. as the Messenger of the Masters, now found it prudent to remain silent.
    But after Col. Olcott’s tour and return to India, it is clear that the testimonials of the respect accorded to him and his position of President-Founder reinforced his feeling of security and strength. Likewise, from his past conduct, it is evident he had expected that with the death of H.P.B. she would no longer remain a living power in the Society. That part of his nature which so often had risen in rebellion against H.P.B. living, as the dominant factor in the Society of which he felt himself the true and competent Head, once more became restive and decisive of his action. The current of his thoughts is clearly discernible in his Address to the “Sixteenth Convention and Anniversary of the Theosophical Society, at the Headquarters, Adyar, Madras,” India, at the end of December, 1891. He made this address an occasion for warning against any “idolatry” of H.P.B.:
   
As the Co-Founder of the Society, as one who has had constant opportunities for knowing the chosen policy and wishes of our Masters, as one who has, under them and with their assent, borne our flag through sixteen years of battle, I protest against the first giving way to the temptation to elevate either them, their agents, or any other living or dead personage, to the divine status, of their teachings to that of infallible doctrine. .
    If she [H.P.B.] had lived, she would have undoubtedly left her protest against her friends making a saint of her or a bible out of her magnificent, though not infallible writings. I helped to compile her Isis Unveiled” while Mr. Keightley and several others did the same by “The Secret Doctrine.” Surely we know how far from infallible are our portions of the books, to say nothing about hers. She did not discover, nor invent Theosophy, nor was she the first or the ablest agent, scribe or messenger of the Hidden Teachers of the Snowy Mountains. The various scriptures of the ancient nations contain every idea now put forth, and in some cases possess far greater beauties and merits than any of her or our books. We need not fall into idolatry to signify our lasting reverence and love for her, the contemporary teacher, nor offend the literary world by pretending that she wrote with the pen of inspiration. Nobody living was a more staunch and

ALTHOUGH A CAUSE with the highest conceivable ideals, capable of drawing out from men their best efforts and stirring them to unselfish determination, the Theosophical Movement was nevertheless subject to the common weaknesses and failures of human nature. Again and again, the Movement suffered setbacks from the failure of theosophists to distinguish between the real work they had to do—popularizing the fundamental ideals of brotherhood, moral law, and cyclic spiritual evolution—and the merely incidental issues of personality and organization. H. P. Blavatsky and William Q. Judge are singled out in the present volume as the real founders of the Theosophical Movement, not because of any particular regard for them as personalities, but because their work reveals that they understood and practiced the principles of soul-education, that they knew the needs of the race and time and met those needs with self-effacing devotion and unparalleled efficiency.
    Until her death in 1891, H.P.B. bore the brunt of the inner and outer reactions generated by the moral power of the Theosophical Movement. Fated from the beginning to suffer alike from the enmity of sceptics and the emotional enthusiasm of mere “believers,” she did her work without regard for any personal consideration. She found Olcott, instructed him in as much as he could learn, and with his help established the Society. In Judge she nurtured the seed of inner perception and made him her colleague in the occult tasks she had undertaken. She wrote down the Theosophical philosophy in systematic form, re-established in the West the School for Disciples of the Wisdom-Religion, and bore with fortitude the vicious attacks that seemed to dissolve all that she had attempted to accomplish, always returning to her labors with undaunted vigor and an infinite supply of energy and inspiration.

173———————————————————OLCOTT’S ATTITUDE TOWARD H. P. B.

H.P.B. cared nothing for the nominal achievement of a large “Society.” She cared only for the Theosophical Movement, which was, for her, a living power in the hearts of men. More than once she found it necessary to declare to Olcott that if he continued to obstruct her work, or if he failed to support her in some important decision, she would leave the Society entirely and work with those who understood what she was trying to do. Olcott, on his part, was fanatically devoted to the Society as an institution. From the attack of the Coulombs to the machinations of Prof. Coues, Olcott’s policy was always to protect the Society first, with the result that if he believed H.P.B. had acted injudiciously in relation to the Society’s welfare, his defense of her was half-hearted at best. The President-Founder’s reverence for “organization” naturally led him to oppose those of H.P.B.’s actions which, as he saw them, might disturb the harmony or lessen the prestige of the Society. He complains repeatedly in Old Diary Leaves of H.P.B.’s “interference” in the practical affairs of the Society and attempts to convey the impression to his readers that he was the long-suffering wheel-horse of the Theosophical Movement, who patiently endured the results of H.P.B.’s erratic policies and adjusted as best he could the conflicts and difficulties arising from her mistakes.
     Olcott’s attitude toward H.P.B. in 1888 is disclosed by events which followed his visit to Europe in that year. He had traveled from India in order to deal with a quarrel among the Paris members, and in arbitrating the issue he acted against the wishes of H.P.B. As the differences between them became increasingly evident to the members of the Society, the two Founders felt it advisable to issue a joint note, which appeared in both the Theosophist and Lucifer, affirming “that there is no enmity, rivalry, strife, or even coldness, between us, nor ever was; nor any weakening of our joint devotion to the Masters, or to our work, with the execution of which they have honoured us. Widely dissimilar in temperament and mental characteristics, and differing sometimes in views as to methods of propagandism, we are yet of absolutely one mind as to that work.”
     In the same issue of Lucifer in which the Joint Note of the Founders appeared (October, 1888), Olcott permitted publica-

 175 ——————————————————— THE ADEPTS’ VIEW OF H. P. B.

should be made to understand it. Since 1885 I have not written, nor caused to be written save thro’ her agency, direct or remote, a letter or line to anybody in Europe or America, nor communicated orally with, or thro’ any third party. Theosophists should learn it, You will understand later the significance of this declaration, so keep it in mind. Her fidelity to our work being constant, and her sufferings having come upon her thro’ it, neither I nor either of my Brother associates will desert or supplant her, As I once before remarked, ingratitude is not among our vices.
     “To help you in your present perplexity: H.P.B. has next to no concern with administrative details, and should be kept clear of them [so far as her strong nature can be controlled]. But this you must tell to all:—W7ith occult matters she has everything to do. We have not abandoned her; she is not ‘given over to chelas.’ She is our direct agent. [I warn you against permitting your suspicions and resentment against ‘her many follies’ to bias your intuitive loyalty to her.] In the adjustment of this European business, you will have two things to consider—the external and administrative, and the internal and psychical. Keep the former under your control and that of your most prudent associates, jointly; leave the latter to her. You are left to devise the practical details. . . . Only be careful, I say, to discriminate when some emergent interference of hers in practical affairs is referred to you on appeal, between that which is merely exoteric in origin and effects, and that which beginning on the practical tends to beget consequences on the spiritual plane. As to the former you are the best judge, as to the latter, she......
    The importance of this counsel to Olcott cannot be overestimated.* It was he, not she, who “interfered,” and in a way calculated to disturb and subvert the real work of H.P.B..
    In April, 1886, H.P.B. wrote a long letter to Franz Hartmann, who, it will be remembered, was at Adyar during the Coulomb episode, and who witnessed the Indian Convention’s practical desertion of H.P.B. Hartmann had written to her at length, asking a number of questions. Her reply throws light on Olcott’s shortcomings:
    As to . . . that portion of your letter where you speak of the “army” of the deluded—and the “imaginary” Mahatmas of
 ————————————————————
* As early as 1884, Olcott had received from the same source another letter bearing much the same advice: “You have never understood Upasika, nor the laws thro’ which her apparent life has been made to work since you knew her. You are ungrateful and unjust and even cruel, You take maya for reality and reality for illusion,” (See Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom, Second Series, Adyar, 1925, pp. 87, 89-90.)

 177——————————————————— H.P.B.’S SUPPORT OF OLCOTT

society and religions to furnish people with something higher and nobler than craving after money and honors—is at the bottom of it. Place this failure on one side, and the mischief and havoc produced in people’s brains by modern spiritualism, and you have the enigma solved. Olcott to this day is sincere, true and devoted to the cause. He does and acts the best he knows how, and the mistakes and absurdities he has committed and commits In this day are due to something he lacks in the psychological portion of his brain, and he is not responsible for it. Loaded and heavy is his Karma, poor man, but much must be forgiven to him, for he has always erred through lack of right judgment, not from any vicious propensity.
Olcott’s understanding of the adepts—the “Theosophical Mahatmas”—was thus a modified conception of “miraculous” beings. He lacked a rational grasp of the idea of natural adepts, as products of evolution, and tended as a result to surround his statements concerning H.P.B.’s teachers with an atmosphere of miracle. But Madame Blavatsky’s work and interest were in precisely this field which Olcott could not understand—the actual processes of moral evolution. Debarred from any real collaboration with her on this plane, he became wholly absorbed in the work of the Theosophical Society. This concentration of his energies was an important factor in shaping his attitude toward H.P.B. He writes in Old Diary Leaves of a letter he received from her shortly after she had moved to London, in the summer of 1887:
     At Chupra, among my foreign letters I received one from H.P.B. which distressed me much. She had consented to start a new magazine with capital subscribed by London friends of hers, while she was still editor and half proprietor of the Theosophist—a most unusual and unbusiness-like proceeding. Besides other causes, among them the persuasion of English friends, a reason which strongly moved her to this was that Mr. Cooper-Oakley, her own appointee as Managing Editor [of the Theosophist], had more or less sided with T. Subba Row in a dispute which had sprung up between him and H.P.B. on the question whether the “principles” which go into the make-up of a human being were seven or five in number. Subba Row had replied in our pages to an article of hers on the subject, and her letters to me about it were most bitter and denunciatory of Cooper-Oakley, whom she, without reasonable cause, charged with treachery. It was one of those resistless impulses which carried her away sometimes into extreme measures. She wanted me to take away his editorial authority, and even sent me a

187  ——————————————————H. P. B. LOYAL TO CAUSE, NOT PLACE

me and several honourable men, he may realise them better, when he reads the present.
    H.P.B. then reprints the “Disclaimer” from the Supplement to the July Theosophist, and analyzes the several insinuations in regard to members of the E.S., who, she says, “stand accused by Mr. Harte . . . of ‘arbitrary and under hand proceedings’.” She asks, “Is not such a sentence a gross insult thrown into the face of honourable men—far better Theosophists than any of their accusers—and of myself ?“ Of the plain intimation that the American or British Sections or the Blavatsky Lodge or the E.S. wanted to “boss Adyar,” she says:
    That the E. S. had never any pretensions to “boss the T. S.” stands to reason: with the exception of Col. Olcott, the President, the Esoteric Section has nothing whatever to do with the Theosophical Society, its Council or officers. It is a Section entirely apart from the exoteric body and independent of it, H.P.B. a/one being responsible for its members, as shown in the official announcement over the signature of the President-Founder himself. It follows, therefore, that the E.S., as a body, owes no allegiance whatever to the Theosophical Society, as a Society, least of all to Adyar.

Next she takes up another statement in the “Disclaimer”:
    It is pure nonsense to say that “H.P.B is loyal to the Theosophical Society and to Adyar” (!?). H.P.B. is loyal to death to the Theosophical CAUSE, and those great Teachers whose philosophy can alone bind the whole of Humanity into one Brotherhood. Together with Col. Olcott, she is the chief Founder and Builder of the Society which was and is meant to represent that CAUSE; and if she is so loyal to H. S. Olcott, it is not at all because of his being its “President,” but, firstly, because there is no man living who has worked harder for that Society, or been more devoted to it than the Colonel, and, secondly, because she regards him as a loyal friend and co-worker. Therefore the degree of her sympathies with the “Theosophical Society and Adyar” depends upon the degree of the loyalty of that Society to the CAUSE. Let it break away from the original lines and show disloyalty in its policy to the CAUSE and the original programme of the Society, and H.P.B., calling the T. S. disloyal, will shake it off like dust from her feet.
    And what does “loyalty to Adyar” mean, in the name of all wonders? What is Adyar apart from that CAUSE and the two (not one Founder, if you please) who represent it? . . . Adyar is the present Headquarters of the Society, because these “Headquarters are wherever the President is,” as stated in the rules. To be logical, the Fellows of the T. S. had to be loyal to Japan

189 ——————————————————— H. P. B. APPEALS TO COLLEAGUES

    And now I have said over my own signature what I had to say and that which ought to have been said in so many plain words long ago. The public is all agog with the silliest stories about our doings, and the supposed and real dissensions in the Society. Let every one know the truth at last, in which there is nothing to make any one ashamed, and which alone can put an end to a most painful and strained feeling. This truth is as simple as can he.
    The acting editor of the Theosophist has taken it into his head that the Esoteric Section together with the British and American Sections, were either conspiring or preparing to conspire against what he most curiously calls “Adyar” and its authority. Now being a most devoted fellow of the T. S. and attached to the President, his zeal in hunting up this mare’s nest has led him to become more Catholic than the Pope. That is all, and I hope that such misunderstandings and hallucinations will come to an end with the return of the President to India. Had he been at home, he, at any rate, would have objected to all those dark hints and cloaked sayings that have of late incessantly appeared in the Theosophist to the great delight of our enemies.
    But it is time for me to close. If Mr. Harte persists still in acting in such a strange and untheosophical way, then the sooner the President settles these matters the better for all concerned.
    Owing to such undignified quibbles, Adyar and especially the Theoophkt are fast becoming the laughing stock of Theosophists themselves as well as of their enemies.
    And, lest her unfailing clemency should again be misconstrued and abused to their own injury, and that of the Cause to which they, no less than herself, are pledged, she concludes with an appeal mingled with warning to those at fault:
    I end by assuring him [Mr. Harte] that there is no need for him to pose as Colonel Olcott’s protecting angel. Neither he nor I need a third party to screen us from each other. We have worked and toiled and suffered together for fifteen long years, and if after all these years of mutual friendship the President Founder were capable of lending ear to insane accusations and turning against me, well—the world is wide enough for both. Let the new Exoteric Theosophical Society headed by Mr. Harte, play at red tape if the President lets them and let the General Council expel me for “disloyalty,” if, again, Colonel Olcott should he so blind as to fail to see where the “true friend” and his duty lie. Only unless they hasten to do so, at the first sign of their disloyalty to the CAUSE—it is I who will have resigned my office of Corresponding Secretary for life and left the Society. This will not prevent me from remaining at the head of those—who will follow me.                               H. P. BLAVATSKY

IN 1892, the future course of the Movement depended in large part on Annie Besant—upon whom she would trust for counsel, and upon the position she assumed with respect to H.P.B. Would she side with Olcott and become “organization-minded,” or would she stand with Judge, who held that the Movement could be no greater than the moral vitality of its members? Mr. Judge might hope that Mrs. Besant would see where the real work of the Movement lay, but he could only set an example and encourage her own efforts in the right direction; meanwhile, he was himself the constant target of all those who had come to adopt what may be called the “Adyar attitude” of reliance on organization, rules, and “official” authority.
    The first important event that was to shape the circumstances in which Mrs. Besant made her choice was the announcement by Col. Olcott of his resignation from the Presidency of the Society. The notice of this decision, which appeared in the Path for March, 1892, came as a complete surprise to all but a handful of the members of the Society. While Col. Olcott attributed his retirement to ill-health, the real reason came to light several years later, in a letter by Herbert Burrows to the English Theosophist for November, 1895. Explaining his own resignation from the Society, Mr. Burrows referred to the “accusations of grave immorality against Col. Olcott, laid before him by Mrs. Besant and Mr. Judge, and in consequence of which the Colonel resigned his presidency.”
    Mrs. Besant had planned to go to India toward the close of 1891. Instead, she traveled to New York to discuss with Mr. Judge the accusations against Col. Olcott which had been brought to her attention in London. She repeated the charges to Mr. Judge in the presence of confidential witnesses, one of whom was E. August Neresheimer, and demanded immediate action, requesting that Judge, as Vice-President of the Society, ask Col. Olcott to resign. Mr. Judge thereupon wrote a letter

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new era. . . . as it had been my duty in the past to put the teaching of the Mahatmas before the world, so it looks probable that such tasks will present themselves again, and on this account it is that I am bound at the present crisis to speak rather more plainly than inclination in other circumstances would have prompted.
    To this bid by Mr. Sinnett for recognition as a “channel” to the Masters in the “new era,” Mr. Judge replied simply and briefly, by pointing out:
In her Secret Doctrine, availing herself of the same teachers to whom she introduced Mr. Sinnett, she corrected two errors into which she said he had fallen, i.e., respecting Devachan and our companion planets. It is a perfectly unthinkable proposition to say that she was not advised by the Masters when writing the Secret Doctrine. I who saw many of the Masters’ letters in 1888 in reference to the Secret Doctrine certainly cannot give up the evidence of my inner and outer senses. I know as surely as I know any fact that the same teachers were giving her in 1887 and 1888, as before, information for that book, in black upon white, and I am certain they dictated the corrections given in Secret Doctrine upon the points now before us.
In the next issue of the Path, Mr. Judge reprinted the letter received from the Master by Col. Olcott while in mid-ocean, en route to London in 1888.     One passage in particular served as a commentary on Mr. Sinnett’s innuendoes and claims:
     “Since 1885 I have have not written nor caused to be written save through her [H.P.B.’s] agency direct or remote a letter or a line to anybody in Europe or America, nor communicated orally with or through any third party. Theosophists should learn it. You will understand later the significance of this declaration, so keep it in mind.”
    The bearing of this statement on later events is significant, as years after it became known that Mr. Sinnett believed H.P.B. to be a deliverer of bogus messages from the Masters. A letter by him, published in 1895, accuses her of fabricating messages to further her policies in the Society, and he asserts that he discovered she did this about the year 1887. In view of the opinion held by the author of Esoteric Buddhism, it is not difficult to understand the ease with which he contradicted the statements of The Secret Doctrine. The real explanation, however, is that Mr. Sinnett had himself lapsed into Spiritualism, the London Lodge becoming little more than a cultured Theosophical séance circle, with results of a quality that

199 ———————————————————OLCOTT ON H. P. B.’S “DEFECTS”

might be expected. (See Sinnett’s Early Days of Theosophy in Europe, written in 1919, but posthumously published.)
   In the controversy between Mr. Sinnett and Mr. Judge concerning planetary evolution, Mrs. Besant chose “to follow H. P. Blavatsky’s teachings,” saying that “for the teaching she brought us we are deeply grateful, and we do not care to benefit by the message and constantly cavil at and find fault with the messenger.” From Col. Olcott, who published Mr. Sinnett’s reply to Mr. Judge in the Theosophist, there came as comment only repetition of his old refrain regarding the “human fallibility of H.P.B.,” and the admonition that “loyalty to an idea” does “not imply willful blindness as to the merits or deficiencies of its exponents.”
    By this time, Col. Olcott’s habit of warning students against believing too much in H.P.B. had become a major theme in nearly all of his written and spoken utterances. A year before, in the Theosophist for March, 1892, he had begun publishing the series of rambling autobiographical articles entitled “Old Diary Leaves,” in which he recounted his personal recollections of the Movement. “Old Diary Leaves” is written in an easy, lucid and interesting style, overflowing with stories of marvelous and mysterious phenomena. It deals graphically with the human and anecdotal side of the Movement—a side purposely ignored in all the writings of H.P.B. and W. Q. Judge. Olcott explained his purpose in writing these reminiscences three years later, in 1895, when the first series of “Old Diary Leaves” was issued in book form He said in his Foreword:
    The controlling impulse to prepare these papers was a desire to combat a growing tendency within the Society to deify Mme. Blavatsky, and to give her commonest literary productions a quasi-inspirational character. Her transparent faults were being blindly ignored, and the pinchbeck screen of pretended authority drawn between her actions and legitimate criticism. Those who had least of her actual confidence, and hence knew least of her private character, were the greatest offenders in this direction. It was but too evident that unless I spoke out what I alone knew, the true history of our movement could never be written, nor the actual merit of my wonderful colleague become known. In these pages I have, therefore, told the truth about her and the beginnings of the Society—truth which nobody can gainsay. . . . I have pursued my present

                                                                           THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
                                                                               PRESIDENT’S OFFICE
                                                                                                                                               Agra, Feb. 7th, 1894.
To William Q. Judge, Vice-President T. S.
Dear Sir and Brother,—
    I enclose herewith a certified copy of Annie Besant’s formal letter to me, dated Allahahad, Feb. 6th inst. In it she demands an official enquiry, by means of a Committee, into the matter of your alleged misuse of the Mahatmas’ names and handwriting.
By virtue of the discretionary power given me in Art. VI of the Revised Rules, I place before you the following options
    (1) To retire from all offices held by you in the Theosophical Society and leave me to make a merely general public explanation; or—
    (2) To have a judicial Committee convened, as provided for in Art. VI, Sec. 3, of the Revised Rules, and make public the whole of the proceedings in detail.
    In either alternative, you will observe, a public explanation is found necessary: in the one case to be limited as far as possible and made general; in the other to be full and covering all the details.
    I suggest that if you decide for a Committee you fix London as the place of meeting, as by far the most central and convenient to all concerned. But whether you choose New York, London, or elsewhere, I shall in all probability be represented by proxy, unless something now unforeseen should arise to make it imperative that I shall personally attend.
    As it will be much better that I should know your decision before Annie Besant leaves India (March 20th), I would ask you to kindly cable me the word “first” if you choose to resign; or “second” if you demand the Committee.
                                                                                                                            Fraternally yours,
                                                                                                                            H. S. OLCOTT,
                                                                                                                President Theosophical Society

COLONEL OLCOTT’S LETTER of February 7 reached Mr. Judge on March 10, 1894. He at once sent the following cable to the President of the Society. “Charges absolutely false. You can take what proceedings you see fit; going to London in July.” (The trip to London was for the purpose of attending the annual convention of the European Section.) On March 15, Mr. Judge issued a four-page printed statement concerning the attack upon him. He begins, in this statement, by explaining that the accusations transmitted by Col. Olcott have previously existed for some time in the form of “vague and suppressed rumors,” and that the action of the President of the Society now compels him (Mr. Judge) to speak, “to the end that all members of the Society and friends of my own in all parts of the world shall be in possession of facts, so that surprise and perhaps confusion may be prevented.”
    Mr. Judge goes on to say, “The assertion is made in India that I have been guilty of “misuse of the names and handwriting of the Mahatmas’,” and that this has been “officially communicated to the President.” He does not mention Mrs. Besant’s name at all in connection with the action of the President-Founder, but merely reports that “an investigation is demanded through an official inquiry,” and that Col. Olcott, “conceiving himself required and authorized to take action,” has repeated the charges in an official letter, offering Mr. Judge the “options” of resigning or inviting “trial.”
    Mr. Judge next makes clear the reason for his cablegram of March 10, and the form of his reply:
The charge is made against me as Vice-President: I have replied as an individual and shall so continue, inasmuch as in my capacity of Vice-President my duties are nominal. . . . The only charges that could be made against the Vice-President would be those of failing to perform his duties, or misusing the office when there were any duties attached to it. On the face of this very vague charge, then, it is evident that there is nothing in it relating to the official Vice-President.

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tion of the Rules of the Society? At all events, it is evident that both Mead and Keightley saw at once that Mrs. Besant and the President-Founder had grossly violated the principles all professed, as well as the plain provisions of the Constitution of the Society. Under the date of March 27, 1894, therefore, they issued over their joint official signatures as the General Secretaries of the two sections, the European and the Indian, a circular entitled: For the information of the Members of the European and Indian Sections of the Theosophical Society.”
    The writers begin by reciting that they have read unofficial copies of the letter of Mrs. Besant of February 6 and of Col. Olcott’s of February 7. Addressing themselves to Col. Olcott as President-Founder of the T. S., they insist that any further proceedings must be “strictly constitutional and impartial,” and continue:
    It is therefore our plain duty as the General Secretaries of two out of the three Sections of the T. S. and members of its General Council, to call your attention officially to the following points with a view to safeguarding (1) the Constitution, (2) the non-sectarian character, and (3) the impartiality of the Theosophical Society.
    First: by Art. VI, Sections 2 and 3, of the “Constitution and Rules of the Theosophical Society” as officially ratified and promulgated by yourself on Dec. 31st, 1893, it is enacted that, in the event of charges being preferred against the President, or Vice-President, (a) the said charges shall be in writing, and (b) copies thereof shall “at once” be forwarded to the accused and “to each member of the General Council.”
    We now desire to point out that you have not followed the procedure laid down in either of these respects, for:
1. Your official letter to Mr. W. Q. Judge above referred to, contains no copy in writing of any charges, does not give the names of the persons who bring such, and even contains no specific statement of what are the exact charges brought.
2. No official copy either of “charges in writing” or even of your above-mentioned letter to Mr. Judge has reached either of us; although sufficient time has elapsed since your letter reached Mr. Judge in America for an unofficial copy thereof to be received in England.
    Therefore, as members of the General Council of the T. S. we emphatically protest against this departure from the rules of procedure laid down in the Constitution and also against this

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also communicate to them your reply when received, as the members are already unofficially informed of the matter.
            We are, dear Sir and Brother,
                                       Fraternally yours,
                                      BERTRAM KEIGHTLEY,
                                            Gen. Sec. Indian Sec. T. S.

G. R. S. MEAD,
Gen. Sec. European Sec. T. S.
    Before Col. Olcott had opportunity to realize that the procedure he had followed was exciting extreme disapproval, even from those whom he might regard as solid supporters, such as Bertram Keightley, secretary of the Indian Section, he received from Mr. Judge the cable declaring the charges false and ignoring the options extended to him. Olcott thereupon sent two more official letters to Mr. Judge. The first is formally addressed to him as General Secretary of the American Section, stating that the charges will be laid before a Judicial Committee of the Society, to meet in London on June 27. Mr. Judge was invited to request the Executive Committee of the American Section to appoint two members to serve on the Judicial Committee, “to sit as representatives of the American Section, and consider and dispose of the charges.”
    The second letter was directed to Mr. Judge as “VicePresident, T. S.” This letter declared him suspended from the office of Vice-President and remarked, “As the accused party you will, of course, be debarred from sitting and voting in the Committee . . . but you are entitled to enjoy the full opportunity to disprove the charges brought against you.”
The first of these letters would compel Mr. Judge as its General Secretary to himself place the charges and the correspondence before the forthcoming Convention of the American Section due to be held at San Francisco in April, 1894, and thus put him on the defensive before his own Section against charges sanctioned by the President-Founder and Mrs. Besant, the two most important and influential members of the Society—the two who had posed hitherto as his dear friends and colleagues in the Society and the Movement.
The second of these letters would force Judge as Vice-President to inform the members that he had been suspended by the President-Founder and thus himself be made the medium of conveying to them the information that the Presi-

THE VIRTUAL FIASCO of the July 10 meeting of the Judicial Committee called by Col. Olcott left a troubled atmosphere in the Theosophical Society. Mr. Judge’s accusers had proceeded with a great show of righteousness and “legality,” expressing profound solicitude for the welfare of the Theosophical Movement at large. Both Col. Olcott and Mrs. Besant asserted that they felt compelled by duty to undertake the unpleasant task of instituting the investigation in order to free Mr. Judge from the taint of calumny and to afford him the opportunity to meet directly the accusations and rumors concerning his conduct, and to disprove them if he could. But when the inquiry, thus heralded, reached its climax in an official “hearing,” the entire procedure collapsed of its own weight, and its sponsors retired in confusion.
    The London Convention of the European Section of the Society was to hold its first session on July 12. Possibly in the hope that a more conclusive result of the inquiry might be presented to the European delegates, Mrs. Besant proposed to Dr. J. D. Buck that a “Jury of Honor” be impaneled to pass on the “charges.” She suggested the names of Messrs. Sinnett, Bertram Keightley, Sturdy, Burrows, and Firth for membership on such a jury. This was declined on the grounds that Mr. Judge had not yet been supplied with certified copies of the documents alleged to contain the “evidence” against him; that he would need time to produce witnesses and documents in rebuttal; finally, that the majority of the names submitted were those of men known to be already prejudiced against him, and that a jury, if chosen, should be composed of members qualified to weigh and pass upon principles, processes, and evidences necessarily connected with “precipitations” and other “occult” phenomena. There was further discussion of the “Jury of Honor” idea, but the course finally adopted was the presentation of two statements, one by Mrs. Besant, the other by Mr. Judge, before the European Con-

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    In April Mrs. Besant, now returned to England, issued a booklet of 88 pages entitled The Case against W. Q. Judge. It contained a long letter by Mrs. Besant ‘to members of the T. S.,” a detailed statement of six charges against Mr. Judge, and testimony said to have been prepared for presentation at the Judicial Committee hearing of July, 1894, still other “evidence,” and a memorandum by Mrs. Besant concerning the “messages” she had received through Mr. Judge.
    The important revelation in this booklet is Mrs. Besant’s statement, in her opening “Letter to members,” that she first learned of Mr. Judge’s “deception” about September, 1893. Some words and acts of Mr. Judge, she said, caused her to be uneasy. She continued:
    The result was that I made a direct appeal to the Master, when alone, stating that I did feel some doubt as to Mr. Judge’s use of His name, and praying Him to endorse or disavow the messages I had received through him. He appeared to me as I had so often before seen Him, clearly, unmistakably, and I then learned from Him directly that the messages were not done by Him, and that they were done by Mr. Judge.
    This meant, of course, that as early as September, 1893, Mrs. Besant believed on “high spiritual authority” that Judge had tricked her with regard to messages from the Master. In explanation of her long silence concerning this “discovery,” she claimed that the Master had told her to take no public action she could not “prove,” and that the needed “evidence” would be provided when she reached Adyar. There, after her meeting with Olcott, Walter Old, and others, she said, she was ordered “to put an end to the deception practised.” Mrs. Besant’s account of the instruction which, she claimed, was given her by the Master, concludes:
    I was bidden to wash away the stains on the T. S. “Take up the heavy Karma of the Society. Your strength was given you for this.” How could I, who believed in Him, disobey?
    In this letter to the members of the T. S., Mrs. Besant claims two visitations from H.P.B.’s Master: the first, apparently, in America, about the time of the World’s Fair Parliament of Religions, which she attended with Chakravarti; the second at Adyar, in either November or December. She also states that the first messages she received through Mr. Judge were those she referred to in her Hall of Science address, in

THE CONVENTION OF THE AMERICAN SECTION was held at Boston, April 28-29, 1895, with the 89 active Lodges all represented by delegates in person or by proxy. In addition there were numerous visiting Fellows from all over the United States and some from abroad. Dr. J. D. Buck was elected permanent chairman. Dr. Archibald Keightley was present from London as the delegate of several English branches. A letter from a number of Fellows in Australia was read, also an official letter from G. R. S. Mead, General Secretary of the European Section. No word was received from the Indian Section nor from the President-Founder.
    Mr. Judge’s report as General Secretary contained the usual information on the work of the preceding year. It briefly rehearsed the charges against him, the meeting of the Judicial Committee in July, 1894, the Westminster Gazette articles, the subsequent proceedings at Adyar involving the resolutions demanding his “resignation” and an “explanation.” On all this his report says:
    I have replied, refusing to resign the VicePresidency.* And to the newspaper attack I have made a provisional and partial reply, as much as such a lying and sensational paper deserved. . . . But I have an explanation, and I renew my declaration of innocence of the offenses charged. As I have said in London and since, the messages I delivered, privately, are genuine messages from the Master, procured through me as the channel, and that the basis of the attack on me is unbelief in my being a channel.
    When all routine business of the Convention was concluded, Mr. C. A. Griscom, Jr., read a series of resolutions, with a preamble reciting the difficulties of continuing the work of the Movement under the then prevailing circumstances. The essential resolutions were:
    First, that the American Section, consisting of Branches of the Theosophical Society in America, in convention assembled,
—————————————————
* He elsewhere explained that he regarded resignation as a confession of guilt.

256——————————————————— THE THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT

use more than ordinary exercise of power to drive them away. We do not choose to do so. We do not find it either necessary or profitable to lose our time waging war on the unprogressed planetaries who delight in personating gods and sometimes well-known characters who have lived on earth. There are Dhyan Chohans and Chohans of darkness. Not what they term devils, but imperfect intelligences who have never been born on this or any other earth or sphere no more than the Dhyan Chohans have, and who will never belong to the “Children of the Universe,” the pure planetary intelligences who preside at every Manvantara, while the Dark Chohans preside at the Pralaya.
    To the text of the Prayag Letter, Mr. Judge added the following comment in the Path:
Now this is a genuine message from the Master, allowing, of course, for any minor errors in copying. Its philosophical and occult references are furthermore confirmed by the manuscript of part of the third volume of the Secret Doctrine, not yet printed. We know also that Master K.H. informed Mr. Sinnett and others that he was an esoteric Budhist; H.P.B. declared herself a Buddhist; on my asking her in 1875 what could the Masters’ belief be called she told me they might be designated “pre-Vedic Budhists”; but that no one would now admit there was any Buddhism before the Vedas, so I had best think of them as Esoteric Buddhists.
    But I am informed that Mrs. Besant has several times privately stated that in her opinion the letter first above printed was a “forgery or humbug” gotten up by H.P.B. I know that Mr. Chakravarti has said the same thing, because he said it to me in New York. It is for Mrs. Besant to deny the correctness of my information as to what she said: she can affirm her belief in the genuineness of the letter. If she does so, we shall all be glad to know. If she merely denies that she ever impugned it, then it will be necessary for her to say affirmatively what is her belief, for silence will be assent to its genuineness. I affirm that it is from one of the Masters, and that, if it be shown to be a fraud, then all of H.P.B.'s claims of connection with and teaching from the Master must fall to the ground. It is now time that this important point be cleared up.
                                                                                                                     WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

    Mr. Judge sent advance proofs of his article, including the Prayag Letter, to Lucifer and the Theosophist. Mrs. Besant replied: “I do not regard the letter as genuine, but I have never attributed it to H.P.B.” * She printed this statement in
————————————————
* The letter of H.P.B. to Sinnett, containing the Prayag Letter,” appears in full in The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett;, first published in 1923 (see Appendix, . 461). In it H.P.B. states that she took down the message at — footnote continued next page—

NEVER, SINCE HIS TRIP to South America, a strong man, Mr. Judge began to fail in the autumn of 1893, when the attacks upon his character became virulent. By the Boston Convention of April, 1895, his condition was such that he could take little active part in the proceedings. Later in the year he had grown so weak that at the insistence of friends and physicians he went south in a vain endeavor to recuperate. This measure proving fruitless, and it becoming increasingly evident that his life could not be prolonged, he returned north by easy stages, spending a fortnight in Cincinnati with Dr. J. D. Buck and other theosophists. He reached New York in February and from then on rapidly declined. Mr. Judge died on Saturday, March 21, 1896. His last words, according to F. T. Hargrove, who was present, were: “There should be calmness. Hold fast. Go slow.”
    We come now to an interlude of extreme confusion in the history of the Theosophical Movement. As in previous crises in the life of the Society, the external events following upon the death of Mr. Judge but reflected perturbations which had their origin in secret vacillations and even betrayals. All this was bound to dissipate the high achievements of the Movement in the United States. First evidence of what was to occur came in the form of an E.S. notice, issued Friday, March 27, announcing a “General Meeting of the E.S.T.” at the Headquarters, 144 Madison Avenue, New York, to be held on Sunday, March 29. All near-by members who could, attended this meeting and were passive participants in what took place. The principal event of the meeting was the reading, by E. T. Hargrove, of a prepared one-page announcement signed by eight of Mr. Judge’s closest associates—individuals who were active in the work of the Aryan Lodge in New York, in the American Society as a whole, in the conduct of Path Magazine, and in the crucially important work of the

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been confided by Mr. Judge to but very few chosen and trusted friends.”
    With this development, the Theosophical Movement entered a phase which threatened to defeat the careful plans laid by H. P. Blavatsky and to obliterate the example set by William Q. Judge. “Let the Society,” one of the Theosophical Adepts had said, “flourish on its moral worth alone.” But this was precisely what those who were left after the passing of Mr. Judge feared to do. They did not hold fast. They did not go slow. Hardly a week had gone by, after his death, when his closest associates in the work combined to impose a “successor” upon the membership of the Theosophical Society.
    The position occupied by Judge in the Movement had been due to what he was and what he did. If Judge enjoyed a special place in the minds of many students, it was not because of any assertions made about him, whether by himself or his supporters, but because of his immeasurable services to the Theosophic cause. What might be said about him, concerning possible occult relationships with H.P.B. and the Masters, was in explanation of his manifest greatness, and consistent with it, rather than the basis for acknowledging him as a “Theosophical Authority” or a “Spiritual Leader.”
    These relationships were now reversed in the representations made in behalf of Mr. Judge’s supposed “successors.” Here was a person “practically unknown to the Theosophical Society” who was now to be accepted as having high occult “status” simply because a small group of theosophists said so. Not “moral worth,” but “claims,” were now to be recognized as settling all questions of Theosophical leadership. It was indeed an insult to the memory of Judge that, so soon after his death, a procedure of “successorship” was established which violated everything he had stood for in life.   Inevitably, and in less than two years, the Society was thrown into confusion and another split occurred.
    The E.S.T. meeting held in New York on March 29 was presided over by E. T. Hargrove. Mr. Hargrove read to those present some extracts which he declared to be from Mr. Judge’s diary, offering “proof” of the latter’s “constant intercourse with Masters.” He read further from a “message” alleged to be from H.P.B. to Mr. Judge (dated January 3,

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me to use my personal influence with people to get them to accept you as O. H. I thought it was for the good of the work, but since then I have learned better. [Italics added.]
    The correspondence published by Mr. Hargrove and his comments about private meetings of the Council held after Mr. Judge’s death make it reasonably apparent that Hargrove’s influence, rather than any written instructions from Mr. Judge, led the Council to declare that “Promise” or Mrs. Tingley was Judge’s “occult successor.” Further evidence of some sort of fantastic juggling of the facts, whether by psychic glamor or by deliberate, if pious, falsification—which, or how, will probably never be finally determined—lies in a letter of Joseph H. Fussell to a New Zealand member, the Rev. S. J. Neill. This letter is in Mr. Fussell’s own handwriting and is dated March 28, 1896—the day before that on which Mr. Fussell, with six others, solemnly approved all that E. T. Hargrove asserted concerning the “instructions” from Mr. Judge. The letter is as follows:
                                                                                                                                                                    
                                                                                                                                                               March 28, ‘96
                                                                                                                                        144 Madison Ave. New York
Rev. S. J. Neill, Auckland, N. Z.
Dear Bro. Neill,
    I know you will wish to hear concerning E.S.T. matters and the status of affairs since the passing away of the Outer Head of the E.S.T. So far as is at present known W.Q.J. has left no directions in regard to carrying on the work of the School. Of course if he has done this, such directions will be followed. An informal meeting was held last Sunday afternoon (Mar. 22) at the house of C. A. Griscom, Jr. to talk over matters relating to the work. There were present C. A. Griscom, Jr., E. A. Neresheimer, Jas. M. Pryse, E. T. Hargrove, C. F. ‘Wright, H T. Patterson, A. H. Spencer, E. B. Page and J. H. Fussell.
    In regard to the E.S.T. the following plan was proposed. That in the event of there being no directions left by Mr. Judge, a circular letter be sent out, signed by the above named and other New York members of the School to all E.S.T. members in America, suggesting that a Council be formed to carry on the routine work of the School, such Council to be concerned solely with this and having no authority as teachers or in strictly esoteric matters. Members will be asked to sign and return a printed slip to the effect that they approve of the plan for organization, etc.

such. In any event, Mr. Fussell knew nothing of any “directions” several days later, on March 28, when he wrote to the Rev. S. J. Neill.
    The later history of the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society founded by Mrs. Tingley* is marked by little except the similar claims of her “successor” to similar occult distinction. Mrs. Tingley died at Visingo, Sweden on July 29, 1929 following an automobile accident in Germany. In a printed letter, dated July 29, 1929, addressed to both the “exoteric” members of the Point Loma society and to the “members of its E.S.,” Dr. Gottfried de Purucker, who had long been associated with Mrs. Tingley, made claim to occult successorship on his own behalf. This letter said in part:
    All the Comrades here feel a supreme confidence in the future, for they know that the Work is fully safeguarded, and thanks be to the immortal gods! they trust the one who now assumes the reins of government in the line of succession from H.P.B., W.Q.J., and K.T.
In assuming the heavy burden of responsibility that has devolved upon me by K.T.’s appointment of me to succeed her.
    I realize that, due to the work of our blessed K.T., more even than to the work of my two previous great Predecessors, our members have been trained, taught to reflect and to have an intuitive realization of what the Theosophical Movement means, not only to ourselves, but to Humanity.
Dr. de Purucker reaches an unprecedented climax for “successors” in informing the membership of his own occult status and relationships:
    Thrice recently, before and since the passing of K.T., has one of the Great Teachers been with me here in Lomaland. I will open my heart to you and tell you something. The two Masters who originally founded the Theosophical Society, and who are the Chiefs of the E.S., are still working with the Society both inner and outer, and for it. . . . Each of these two has progressed far along the Path of Initiation since H.P.B.’s days,
    I have seen and conversed with Master M. within this last month, and twice has Master K.H. been in my office, once alone, and once with a chela, .
    Later in the year, on September 1, Dr. de Purucker addressed another letter to the membership, asking for a new constitu-
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 * The “Universal Brotherhood” part of the name of the society was dropped after Mrs. Tingley’s death.

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Point Loma Leader was driven to various methods of raising money to hold the organization together. In his third letter, the dues of the Society were announced as $12.00 annually, and later an attempt was made to float a loan of $400,000 through Trust Certificates sold the devoted members. Finally, early in 1942, the Society sold its holdings of land on Point Loma and removed in June to Covina, California. The Point Loma property acquired in Mrs. Tingley’s time had originally amounted to 330 acres, on which a number of buildings had been erected to house the activities of the Society—which included a ‘Theosophical University”—and to provide living quarters for officials and resident members. At the time of the sale, these holdings had diminished to 78 acres. The next location was a 41-acre property near Covina, but the Society has recently announced the transfer of its headquarters to another location.
    On September 27, 1942, shortly after the removal of the headquarters to Covina, Dr. de Purucker died of a heart attack at the age of 68 years. After a few days, it was announced that the affairs of the Society were being governed by a five-member “cabinet,” and on October 8, Iverson L. Harris, chairman of the cabinet, issued the following statement:
    The Theosophical Society, ever since its foundation, has been under direction of an uninterrupted succession of leaders and the present situation of its being in charge of members of the late leader’s cabinet is merely temporary, the normal procedure during the interval between the passing of one leader and the succession of the next.
    Dr. de Purucker left full and detailed instructions to his cabinet as to the carrying out of his wishes in the event of his decease. These are being carried out with full approval and confidence of members of the society here and elsewhere.
    Three years later, The Theosophical Forum, the official organ of the Society, announced that Colonel Arthur L. Conger had been elected to succeed Dr. de Purucker as Leader. The claims made for Col. Conger, while more subdued, perhaps, were in no significant way different from those made either by or for Mrs. Tingley and de Purucker. A sample of the sort of thing said about Col. Conger is provided by a review in the Theosophical Forum for February, 1948, in which the writer, G. F. Knoche, explains why neither Mrs.

BEFORE PASSING to other phases of twentieth-century Theosophical history, some attention should be given to the general aftermath of the Tingley succession. The claims for Mrs. Tingley’s high status rested, as we have seen, upon alleged “written instructions” from Mr. Judge and upon “psychic” impressions or communications received by the eight prominent members, headed by E. T. Hargrove, who arranged and participated in the E.S.T. meeting in New York of March 29, 1896. Of these eight, Hargrove was the first to reverse himself and to repudiate Mrs. Tingley as Judge’s successor. In his E.S. pamphlet of May 17, 1896, “An Occultist’s Life,” he had by implication elevated Mrs. Tingley above even H.P.B. and Judge in respect to her “training and preparation.” He was, he explains, “directed” to make these statements concerning Mrs. Tingley. But two years later he is again “directed,” this time to reject Mrs. Tingley and to “expose” her. His authority in both cases was “the Master.” Together with his few associates, Mr. Hargrove re-formed the “original” Theosophical Society and continued to hold small and “conservative” meetings in New York City. The publication issued by Mr. Hargrove’s group, the Theosophical Quarterly, was never much concerned with the dissemination of straight Theosophical teachings, but, as the years went by, assumed increasingly an Anglican ministerial tone. Finally, in July, 1935, the Quarterly announced the suspension of publication, the reason given being that a period of “indrawal” was then at hand. Mr. Hargrove died on April 8, 1939. It should be said, finally, that among those who regarded Mr. Hargrove as “Masters’ Agent” were some of the most cultured minds in the Movement, and some of its best known writers. Among them were Mr. and Mrs. C. A. Griscom, Jr., Mr. Charles Johnston (to whom are owed exquisite translations of the Upanishads and of Shankaracharya’s Crest-Jewel of Wisdom), Dr. Archibald Keightley and his wife (“Jasper Niemand”),

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sors.” He conducted a voluminous personal correspondence on the subject, continuously affirming that Mr. Judge appointed Katherine Tingley to succeed him and as continuously failing to produce more than loose descriptions of the “evidence” of this action by Mr. Judge. Mr. Fussell’s correspondence is also marked by gross attacks and slanders against the character of other Theosophists, while, in his public writings, he was calling for “unity” and greeting the members of other societies and associations as “Brothers.” Further, in one letter he referred to the treachery of Mrs. Besant, while publicly he was soliciting fraternal relations with her society, despite the fact that the “treachery” spoken of had been unacknowledged, un-atoned for, and repeated again and again. What value has a “unity” that is sought on such contradictory grounds?
    The “successorship” controversy was again openly revived in 1946 by a Covina member, Mr. Charles J. Ryan (since deceased), in a letter to the Canadian Theosophist. This publication is issued in Hamilton, Ontario, and was at that time edited by the late A. F. S. Smythe, an old-time Theosophist who had for nearly half a century maintained a running fire of criticism of the conduct of the various schismatic societies calling themselves “Theosophical.” Mr. Ryan’s letter objected to an article which Mr. Smythe had reprinted from Theosophy for April, I946. This article had taken exception to a statement by a non-Theosophical writer in Harper’s to the effect that Mr. Judge appointed Mrs. Tingley as his successor.
    In his letter to the Canadian Theosophist (for September, 1946), Mr. Ryan undertakes to defend two contentions: (1) That successorship of the sort claimed for Mrs. Tingley is in accord with occult law, and with the precedent and teaching of H. P. Blavatsky and William Q. Judge; and (2) that Mr. Judge did in fact intend Mrs. Tingley to be his “occult successor.”
    Mr. Ryan endeavors to dispose of Mr. Judge’s statement concerning the Foulke case by claiming that Mr. Judge didn’t really mean what he said—that he, Judge, wrote “in the heat of battle” when he declared, in his letter to the Wilkesbarre Times:

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the documents.” If Theosophists who believe in “successors” and “leaders” would be as assiduous in studying the Path Magazine, edited by Mr. Judge, as they have been in searching out cryptic meanings in an alleged “occult diary,” they might find in the Path a statement by Mr. Judge on the matter of official “Leaders” of the Society. He there comments on an Executive Notice by Col. Olcott by saying that one of its purposes, which he (Judge) approves, was “to prevent any fixing of the T. S. to H. P. Blavatsky by means of the use of the word ‘leader’.” Yet Mrs. Tingley’s supporters, neglecting Judge’s obvious meaning, or ignorant of this statement, proceeded on an opposite course, chanting the word “leader” until it became a Theosophical fetish.
    In 1932, several years after the death of Mrs. Tingley, some of the “notes” or pages from the “occult diary” came to light in the pages of the 0. E. Library Critic. Dr. H. N. Stokes, editor of the Critic, then expressed his own opinion that the “notes” were in Judge’s handwriting, but left the reader to conclude that this identification proves, not that Mrs. Tingley was properly chosen as Judge’s occult successor in the “true line” of the Movement, but rather that Judge was deluded into thinking that he had received spiritualistic communications from H.P.B.! Now if Dr. Stokes suspected that Judge was a broken reed, the victim of such psychic follies, how could Mr. Ryan cite Stokes in support of the Tingley succession? Mr. Ryan, apparently, welcomed Stokes’ judgment that the psychically received notes were in Judge’s handwriting, but the price he paid for this vindication was the reduction of Judge to a dabbler in Spiritualism, a mere psychic dupe. Judge, whom H.P.B. called “part of myself for eons past,” needed a medium, a “helper,” to get in touch with H.P.B.! What can succession to such a “leader” be worth?
    Mr. Ryan cites as “one of the most important pieces of evidence” a letter by Mrs. Archibald Keightley, published in the Searchlight of May, 1898, in which she had affirmed that Mrs. Tingley’s appointment “came from and was directed by the Master.” But Mrs. Keightley rapidly “changed” either her mind or her Master, as the scathing terms in which she referred to Mrs. Tingley at the Chicago Convention of February 18, 1898, make abundantly clear. Mr. Ryan also men-

THE DEATH OF MR. JUDGE, in less than a year after the separation of the American Section from the parent Society and the formation of the T.S. in A., left Col. Olcott in the unique position of sole survivor of the original Three Founders of the Theosophical Society. Col. Olcott was now the “grand old man” of the Movement, still at the head of the Society, and many who might have remained indifferent to Mrs. Besant’s claims as “successor” to H.P.B. were undoubtedly influenced by the name, “The Theosophical Society,” and the venerable President-Founder’s connection with it. The entirety of the Indian and Australasian membership were faithful to this society. In Great Britain, on the Continent, and, to some extent in the United States, the ability and reputation of Mrs. Besant, the secondary but considerable influence of Mr. Sinnett and other writers and leaders, coupled with the fact that the Besant-Olcott faction was the accuser, and not the accused, in the controversy with Mr. Judge, gave the original Society a special advantage in gaining and holding public attention.
    The course followed by the T.S., however, was hardly one to attract serious-minded people to the support of the Theosophic Cause. The ageing Olcott became increasingly a mere figure-head, while Mrs. Besant’s flair for dramatic pronouncements and claims came gradually to dominate the activities of the Adyar Society. In the summer of 1899, Mrs. Besant withdrew the pledge, memorandum, and instructions of H.P.B. and substituted a new “pledge” for her “esoteric” students. This was followed by “studies” and “instructions” of her own, and by the circulation in her “School” of the literary results of “occult investigations” pursued by Mr. Leadbeater and herself. The latter were eventually published as Occult Chemistry and Thought Forms.
    In 1906, charges of sexual misconduct with and infamous teachings to boys entrusted to his care were brought against Mr. Leadbeater. An inquiry into the matter was held by Col. Olcott in London. After admitting enough of the charges to

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whole accurate, and she said that some time previously she had come to the conclusion that Judge had committed no forgery, and that the messages received by him were genuine. On being requested to say that much, only, if not more, to the Theosophical public the world over, Mrs. Besant demurred and remarked that it was an old and forgotten matter—“Why revive it?” When the inquirer, who was also a long-time friend of Mrs. Besant, sought permission to make her view public himself, she flatly refused it. This came as a shock to the inquirer, for he fully expected that, in the interests of historical veracity, Mrs. Besant would agree to say in public what she so readily admitted to him in private conversation, completely exonerating Mr. Judge from the charge of manufacturing bogus Mahatma messages.
    About all that can be said in extenuation of Mrs. Besant’s attitude in this connection is that she quite possibly really believed that Mr. Judge’s innocence was no longer a matter of importance, so far had she departed from the essential work and meaning of the Theosophical Movement.
    In justice to Mrs. Besant as a world-figure, it should be said that she labored for many years on behalf of the liberation of India, gaining through this work the respect and admiration of Indian patriots. She took an active part in the Indian National Congress and started the Home Rule League which campaigned for the position of “equal partner” for India in the British Commonwealth of Nations. Because of her political activity she was interned by the British Government early in 1917, during World War I, but was soon released. In the same year, she was elected the first woman President of the Indian National Congress. After the Amritsar Massacre of 1919, however, she opposed the civil disobedience program led by Gandhi, which caused her to lose much of her popularity with the Indian masses. She is nevertheless remembered with respect by the leaders of the Indian Independence Movement, as one who gave unstintingly of her time and energy to the cause closest to their hearts.
    Col. Olcott, like Mrs. Besant, also revised his opinion of Mr. Judge, but, again like Mrs. Besant, expressed himself only in a private interview. The occasion was a conversation with

THE COURSE OF EVENTS in the Theosophical world after the death of Mr. Judge—or after 1898, which seems to have been a year of crucial decision, at least in the United States—presses one great question upon the inquirer into Theosophical history. What, actually, is the Theosophical Movement, and can it be said to have any real existence during the twentieth century? If the Movement is a continuing force in the modern world, where should its manifestations be sought? How may they be recognized?
    Even before the betrayal of William Q. Judge, first in life, by Mrs. Besant and Col. Olcott, then after his death, by the claims of various “successors,” it had become evident that the history of the Theosophical Movement is by no means the history of the one or several societies going by that name. When H.P.B. left India in 1885, the Adyar society quite evidently lapsed to the status of a religious organization, subject to all the weaknesses and defects of organizational sectarianism. Thereafter, the chief function of Adyar seems to have been to harass H.P.B. and to impede her work, and, after her passing, to do the same to William Q. Judge. To continue the history of the Adyar society in detail after 1900 would be to perform a melancholy ritual in the name of historical “completeness,” while neglecting the vital currents of Theosophical influence, if any, arising from other sources. The same general analysis applies to other organizational “branches” of the movement. If anything is to be learned from the Theosophical history of the last ten years of the nineteenth century, it is that organizations and organizational claims, whether “exoteric” or “esoteric,” have no necessary connection with the original inspiration and meaning of the Theosophical Movement.
    The year 1898 in particular began a period prolific in the production of new Theosophical sects and cults. Shortly after the split of the American Society into the Hargrove group and the majority wing of the Society headed by Mrs. Tingley, an-

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“Order of the Star of the East,” dischartered and expelled the entire German Section with all of its branches, cancelling the diplomas of more than two thousand members. Within a few months, the loss of these members grew by a thousand more, due to the resignations of members in various European countries in protest against Mrs. Besant’s high-handed procedure. Steiner, it should be noted, offered his own distinctive “teachings,” his present followers claiming that he always followed “his own line,” even while in association with the Adyar Society. In any event, the Anthroposophical Society gained considerable influence in Germany and grew to a large membership throughout Europe. The inspiration of this society has depended largely upon the “occult” communications and instructions of Dr. Steiner, who died in 1925. A phase of Steiner’s influence deserving notice has been through the reforms he accomplished in agriculture. In the United States, this work is known as Bio-Dynamic gardening, having much in common with the organic gardening movement founded by Sir Albert Howard. A large and influential center of the Steiner-inspired movement exists in New York City.
George R. S. Mead, after siding with Mrs. Besant in the “case against William Q. Judge,” remained her devoted assistant until the death of Colonel Olcott. However, the subsequent “Adyar manifestations,” declaring Mrs. Besant the President-Founder’s successor, were more than he could stand and he parted from her, later on establishing the Quest Society, devoted to comparative religions and psychical research. His magazine, the Quest, published from 1909 to 1930, was widely circulated, earning respect for the activities and objectives of the Society. Mr. Mead died in 1934.
Max Heindel, originally a member of Mrs. Besant’s Society and a lecturer in its American Section, came under the influence of Steiner’s works, and after a time blossomed forth on his own account with a new “Rosicrucian” society, and a book entitled The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception. Like Dr. Steiner, Mr. Heindel placed a special emphasis on the mission of Jesus, adding the glamorous idea of Rosicrucian “mysteries.” He established headquarters at Oceanside, California, building up a flourishing association with members in all parts of the world. After Mr. Heindel’s death, his wife continued to direct

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bhavananda of the Hollywood Ramakrishna Mission in producing a new English translation of The Bhagavad Gita, which was published during the war.
    It is of more than passing interest that, in an article published in 1895, Mr. Judge warned the American Theosophists that—The Hindu of to-day is a talker, a hair-splitter, and when he has not been altered by contact with ‘Western culture he is superstitious. Such we do not want as teachers. We will hail them as brothers and co-workers but not as our Magisters. But those Hindus who come here are not teachers. They have come here for some personal purpose and they teach no more nor better than is found in our own theosophical literature: their yoga is but half or quarter yoga, because if they knew it they would not teach a barbarian Westerner. What little yoga they do teach is to be read at large in our books and translations.
At issue was the fact that, although the religions and religious sects of India are far more “metaphysical,” in many respects, than the traditional Christianity of America and Europe, they are nevertheless religions, and not the self-reliant philosophical inquiry into the nature of things that the Theosophical Movement has endeavored to inaugurate. Madame Blavatsky, Judge maintained in many places in his writings, understood the needs of the Western World and sought to present the materials for moral self-education in the West, while the Swamis, although having in some measure a common vocabulary with Theosophy, represent Eastern traditionalism, and even Eastern sacerdotalism—not the dynamic principles of occultism and practical brotherhood that are to be found in The Secret Doctrine and The Key to Theosophy.
    At this point, then, there is need for a reconsideration of the basic ideas and purposes proclaimed by Madame Blavatsky at the outset of her mission—and repeated by her throughout the years of her work as a public figure—for without her impact upon the world, there would have been no Theosophical Movement, no history of it to relate. According to the terms she used to describe her work, the Theosophical Movement is the conscious impulse of moral and intellectual evolution; its origin is with the vanguard of human evolution on this planet—the fraternity of perfected men, the adept-brothers, who were her teachers, and whom she represented as their agent in the world. The Theosophical Movement is, more-

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were suspended during the war.” The friendly candor of Eirenicon soon won for this paper the respect of all who maintain an interest in the spread of the original message of Theosophy and authentic Theosophical history. A statement of the Peace Lodge Policy affirms that while the Peace Lodge belongs to and is chartered by the Adyar Society, it “does not regard a Lodge of the Adyar Society as superior or inferior to any other Lodge or Society belonging to the Theosophical Movement. . . . The merit of a Theosophical Lodge derives from the quality of the lives of its members and the extent to which it embodies a Theosophical integrity of spirit and intelligence.”
    There is also the association of Theosophical students known as the United Lodge of Theosophists, formed in 1909 in Los Angeles, California, under the inspiration and guidance of Robert Crosbie. Mr. Crosbie was a Boston Theosophist during the time of William Q. Judge. He worked very closely with Judge, enjoying his confidence. When, after Judge’s death, the members most active at the New York headquarters raised Mrs. Tingley to the position of Judge’s successor, Mr. Crosbie gave her his loyalty and support. About 1900 he went to Point Loma to be of what assistance he could in the work, there. However, in the course of a few years, he came to feel that nothing constructive was to be accomplished by remaining at Point Loma—that, in fact, the teachings and philosophy of Theosophy had suffered an almost complete eclipse by the methods and sensational program instituted by Mrs. Tingley—and he quietly left the Point Loma Society in 1904 and came to Los Angeles. He was without property or funds, having given all his worldly possessions to the work of the Movement. He secured work in Los Angeles and gradually began to gather around him a few students—most of them entirely new to Theosophy—to undertake once more the task of promulgating Theosophy in the same form as originally presented by the Founders of the Movement. When, in 1909, he had been joined by a small nucleus of persons who shared this ideal, The United Lodge of Theosophists was formed to carry out the purposes in view. Following is the platform then formulated by Mr. Crosbie—very largely from the words of Mr. Judge—and adopted by the associates of U.L.T.:

IF THE STORY of the seventy-five years of history of the Theosophical Movement thus far completed is bewilderingly complex and filled with contradiction, the larger world-history of the same period is not less confusing. In 1875, the people of Europe and America looked out upon a world which, so far as they could see, promised the steady progress of the human race. In the United States, the Civil War had accomplished the end of slavery, and the cycle of industrial exploitation of the Western hemisphere had begun. After the settlement of the Franco-Prussian War at Sedan, no shadow of expected conflict darkened the horizon of continental Europe, while England was enjoying the full splendor of the Victorian Age. That vigorous child of the Renaissance, modern science, was rapidly growing up to manhood and had already proved its practical possibilities in the field of invention, with promise as great for new knowledge and understanding of the natural world. A vigorous ethical spirit, also, was in the air. The ideals of humanitarian socialism were gaining world-wide attention. Filled with the consciousness that they were “civilized,” the intelligent people of the West could see no reason why great and lasting reforms could not soon transform the earth into a model “liberal” society.
    Today, in 1950, we may look back upon that optimistic epoch with an envy that is mingled with war-weary chagrin. We are wiser, perhaps, in being able to see how poorly founded were the nineteenth-century hopes of illimitable progress, but our dearly-bought wisdom of experience has little positive value. We know only that the beckoning ideals of the recent past have played us false, that foundations we thought were as stable as the ground beneath our feet have cracked into ominous fissures, replacing former hopes with fears and questioning. Despite the many advances in medicine, physical health is the attainment of only a few, and the ravages

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devised recreation—all these are part of the general and intuitive attempt by members of the human family to regain the basic integrity that they feel is lacking from the practical side of existence. In politics and social relationships, a similar determination to find the root-principles which apply in the organization of the human community have led to the birth of new conceptions of social order. Men who, years ago, would have been drawn into the ranks of the “radical movement” are now devoting their lives to the ideal of “community” as the basic environmental unit of the good society. Others, who have seen the revolutionary political movements of the nineteenth century end in the grim totalitarian fiascos of the twentieth century, are re-thinking their way through social issues along anarchist lines, with the conception of the moral individual as the starting point for their reflections.
    The popular revolt against war has also developed to the proportion of a significant movement within the past fifty years. The influence of Gandhi in this direction has, of course, been immeasurable. In Asia a kind of international camaraderie exists among admirers of Gandhi, and these are numbered in millions, not only in Asia, but throughout the world. In Europe, the extraordinary popularity of Garry Davis, the young American who for a time renounced his United States citizenship in order to dramatize the idea of a world community, revealed the readiness of hundreds of thousands of people, and even entire cities, to support a grassroots movement for world peace—a movement rising from the hopes and yearnings of the common man, rather than in response to diplomatic concern for the “national interest.” The remarkable progress of the war-resistance movement in England and America, and to a lesser extent elsewhere, also gives evidence of the growing belief that modern war is a collective insanity of the nations, and that if the nations do not know how to stop cutting one another’s throats, the people themselves must call a halt.
    Similar stirrings may be noted in the psychic and emotional life of the peoples of the West. The prestige of evolutionary materialism has lost much of its force—discounted, perhaps, along with the general disillusionment with “science” as providing the means to a happy, peaceful world. When ortho-

NOTES
 

[For the convenience of readers to whom the original sources (most of which are long out of print) are not available, these notes contain, wherever possible, references to reprints of the material quoted. The monthly publication, Theosophy, in which nearly all of these reprints have appeared, is available through The Theosophy Company of Los Angeles, California, which is also the publisher of photographic reprints of the major works of
H. P. Blavatsky, and maintains in print all the books and pamphlets of Mme. Blavatsky and Wm. Q. Judge.]

CHAPTER I
I. History of Civilization in England, by H. T. Buckle (New York:
D. Appleton & Co., 1867), I, 186.

CHAPTER II
The Report on Spiritualism of the Committee of the London Dialectical Society (London: J. Burns, 1873), pp. 5-6.
2. The Life of Sir William Crookes, by E. E. Fournier D’Albe (London: Fisher Unwin, 1923), p. 177.
3.Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism, by William Crookes, F.R.S. (London: J. Burns, 1874).
4. Life of Sir William Crookes, p. 237.
5. The American Scholar (Winter, 1938-9), VIII, 20.
6. Franz Anton Mesmer, by Margaret Goldsmith (New York:
Doubleday, Doran, 1934), p. 151.
7. The History of the Supernatural, by William Howitt (London:
Longmans, Green, 1863), I, 6-8.
8. The Apocatastasis; or Progress Backward, by Leonard Marsh (Burlington: Chauncey Goodrich, 1854), p. 5.

CHAPTER III
1. Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky, by A. P. Sinnett (London: George Redway, 1886).
2. People from the Other World, by Henry S. Olcott (Hartford:
American Publishing Co., 1875), Chapt. xviii.
3. Some Unpublished Letters of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, by Eugene Rollin Corson (London: Rider & Co.), pp. 127-8, 129.
4. A Modern Panarion, by H. P. Blavatsky (London: The Theosophical Publishing Society, 1895), PP. 44-45.
5. Ibid., p. 50 ff.
6. Ibid., pg.. 57.
7. Ibid., Pp. 58-61.

336 ———————————————————THE THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT

10. “A Year on the Path,” Path (March, 1887), I, 353. (Reprinted in Theosophy [April, 1948], XXXVI, 275.)
11. Report of Proceedings, second annual convention, p. 25. (Reprinted in the pamphlet, Five Messages from H. P. Blavatsky to the American Theosophists, Theosophy Company, Los Angeles, 1922.)

CHAPTER X
1. Light on the Path, Written Down by M.C. (Reprinted by The Theosophy Company, Ltd., of India, 1936.)
2. Reminiscences of H. P. Blavatsky, by Bertram Keightley (Adyar:
Theosophical Publishing House, p. 9.
3. Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge, 1890 and 1891 (London:
Theosophical Publishing Society). (Reprinted by The Theosophy Company of Los Angeles.)
4. These works are all available in reprints by The Theosophy Company of Los Angeles.
5. ‘What’s In a Name?” Lucifer (September, 1887), , 1-2. (Reprinted in Theosophy [August, 1949], XXXVII, 437.)
6. “The Signs of the Times,” Lucifer (October, 1887), i, 87-89. (Reprinted in Theosophy [November, 1950), xxxix, 5.)
7.“‘Let Every Man Prove His Own Work’,” Lucifer (November, 1887), i, 169. (Reprinted in Theosophy [May, 1944), xxxii, 304.)
8. “ ‘Lucifer’ to the Archbishop of Canterbury,” Lucifer (December,
1887), I, 242. (Reprinted in Theosophy [February, 1913), I, 131.)
9. Letter to American Section, fifth annual convention, Boston, April, 1891. (Reprinted in the pamphlet, Five Messages from
H. P. Blavatsky to the American Theosophists [Los Angeles: The Theosophy Company, 1922], P. 27.)
10. The Secret Doctrine, 1888, I, xxxvi.
11. Ibid., I, xxxvii.
12. “The Theosophical Society or Universal Brotherhood, Principles, Rules, and Bye-laws, etc.,” Theosophist (April, 1880), I 180. (Reprinted in Theosophy [November, 1949), XXXVIII, 27.)
13. “Chelas and Lay Chelas,” Theosophist (July, 1883), iv, Supp., 10. (Reprinted in Theosophy [March, 1943), XXXI, 198.)
14. Lucifer (October, 1888), iii, 176.
15. “ ‘She Being Dead, Yet Speaketh’,” Path (July, 1892), VII, 121. (Reprinted in Theosophy [May, 1943), XXXI, 291.)
16. “Occultism: What Is It?” Path (May, 1890), V, 55. (Reprinted in Theosophy [March, 1947], XXXV, 196.)
17. See Letters That Have Helped Me. (Los Angeles: 1946), pp. 276-283.

18. Theosophist (May, 1908), XXIX, 756.
19. Theosophist (March, 1890), XI, Supp., cv.
20. Old Diary Leaves, Fourth Series, p. 61.

CHAPTER XI
1. This letter from Olcott was published by Prof. Coues in the New York Sun, July 20, 1890, and was not repudiated by Olcott.
2. Quoted by Mr. Judge in his pamphlet on the Coues-Collins charges.
3. ibid.
4. Light, May, June, et seq., 1889.
5. Theosophist (March, I885), vi, Supp., 6.
6. Light, June 8, 1889.
7. Pamphlet by H.P.B.
8. ‘The Esoteric She” was reprinted in Theosophy (January, 1947), XXXV, 99.

CHAPTER XII
x. Annie Besant, an Autobiography (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1910), P. 340.
2. ibid., p. 343.
3. Lucifer (July, 1890), VI, 429.
4. Theosophist (August, 1890), XI, Supp., cli.
5. H. P. B., In Memory of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, by some of her Pupils (London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1891), p. 6.
6. Convention Report, Theosophical Society in Europe, July 9, 1891.
7. ibid.
8. “The Theosophical Society and H.P.B.,” Lucifer (December,
1890), VII, 275. (Reprinted in Theosophy [July, 1913], I, 391.)
9. Theosophist (October, 1891), XIII, Supp., xi-xii.
10. Lucifer (October, 1891), IX, 89.
11. Theosophist (January, 1892), XIII, Supp., 3.
12. “The Theosophical Society,” Path (June, 1891), VI, 78. (Reprinted in Theosophy [May, 1941], XXIX, 293.)
13. [“A Theosophical Education”) Path (August, 1891), VI, (Reprinted in Theosophy [March, 1914], II, 232.)
14. “Dogmatism in Theosophy,” Path (January, 1892), VI, 297. (Reprinted in Theosophy [April, 1914], x, 270.)

CHAPTER XIII
1. Theosophist (December, 1888), x, Supp., xxvii; Lucifer (October, 1888), III, 147-48.