Theosophy: Origin of the New Age
C.C. Martindale, S.J.
PART I
THE FOUNDERS OF MODERN THEOSOPHY
THOUGH both the word Theosophy and, in a sense, the thing, are
(as modern Theosophists are the first to assert, and as we shall
see below) far older than the movement which officially began on
17th November, 1875, what is popularly known among us as
Theosophy can never be dissociated from the names of Mme.
Blavatsky, of Mrs. Annie Besant, and, in a secondary measure,
from that of Col. Henry Streete Olcott.
Madame Blavatsky
Helen Petrovna Hahn[1] (1831-1891) was born in South Russia of a
noble Mecklenburg family which had settled there. She lived in an
atmosphere of legend and popular fancy, and was surrounded, being
born in the night from the 30th to the 31st of July (the seventh
month of the year), with an elaborate and mystic ritual. She was,
owing to the date of her birth, not only exempt from the power of
the household goblin Domovoy, but was enabled to bring
preternatural powers to bear upon those less privileged who
offended her, and often did so to their disaster.
She was a somnambulist and very psychic. She was supposed to be
possessed, and was "drenched in enough holy water to have floated
a ship"[2] (p. 25), and was exorcised. However, she still spent
hours and days whispering in dark corners "marvellous tales of
travel" and the like, to companions visible only to herself. The
"enormous library" of the country-house where she lived failed to
satisfy her omnivorous curiosity (p. 33); and she was
passionately interested in the extraordinary museum of natural
history there preserved (p. 35). She haunted the "catacombs" of
its cellars, and its midnight park. Miracles of all sorts
attended her childhood; she was clairvoyant and clairaudient (p.
46).
Her governess rashly defied this erratic and unmanageable maiden
to find a man who would accept her as bride; "even," she said,
"old General Blavatsky would decline you" (p. 54). Piqued in her
pride and passion, Helen married him in 1848. Immediately upon
discovering the meaning of marriage, she fled Egypt, and
initiated a series of journeys of which the dates are
disputed.
In the August of 1851 her diary says she was in London, and
there, during a moonlight ramble by the Serpentine, "I met the
Master of my dreams." She proceeds to South America, then to
India by way Pacific. After visiting England via China, Japan,
and America about 1853, she returns to America, and is back in
England again in 1855 or 1856. Again she seeks India, passing
through Egypt, and makes a third unsuccessful effort to enter
Tibet. She reappears in Russia in 1858- 59; is in Tiflis from
1861-63; and reaches Tibet at last, through Egypt and Persia, in
1864. There she witnesses astounding "phenomena."
On 11th November, 1870, her aunt Mme. Nadejka Fadeef receives
"phenomenally" a letter from Tibet, by the hand of "a messenger
with an Asiatic face who vanished before my eyes," reassuring her
as to her niece's safety (H. P. B. and the Masters, pp. 8,
9).
In 1871 she is in Egypt, and founds a Societe Spirite which ends
in fraud and disaster. She makes about this time the acquaintance
of the Coulombs, who succour her, but afterwards, for reasons
variously given, will be found fighting against her. She returned
to America and in 1874 met Col. Olcott, who had been an officer
in the Northern Army.
At this time, however, he was an ex-medium and a journalist, and
was in fact, examining the spiritist phenomena connected with the
brothers Eddy. He came entirely under her influence, and was
extremely pleased with his connection with her, though she seems
to have had a poor enough opinion of him.[3] He was made,
however, first President of the Theosophical Society (the "T.
S."), founded in New York, 17th November, 1875,[4] and certainly
displayed extraordinary talents for organization and for popular
propaganda.
The infant Society, however, was soon all but wrecked, for though
it existed professedly to combat spiritualism equally with
materialism, and to propagate belief in the existence of certain
Eastern sages and their lore, it made use of not a few of the
methods of spiritualism, and Mme. Blavatsky was constantly
accompanied by a perfect fusillade of rappings, and by other
phenomena. She insisted, however, that she was no medium, but a
mediator (i.e., between the sages and ordinary men). Soon after
this H. S. O. and H. P. B. (as it is the curious but convenient
custom of Theosophists to designate their founders) went to
Bombay, where they met once more the Coulombs, and where the
conversion of Mr. A. P. Sinnett took place.
The stormy incidents of 1884-85, owing to the detection, as it
was generally held, of H. P. B. in the wholesale "faking" of
phenomena, were, as was quite admitted, a "tremendous blow."
H. P. B. retired into temporary privacy in Europe, and actually
refused to return to India if she were not allowed to prosecute
the "dastard insinuation" of Mr. Hodgson, the representative in
India of the Society of Psychical Research, that she was a
Russian spy. This, however, her advisers forbade her to do.
She wrote, none the less, from Switzerland, approving of the
assertion that "the T. S., minus Masters, is an absurdity"; and
that "I am the only means of communication with the Masters, and
for giving out their philosophy-the Society, unless I continue to
work for it as in the past, is a dead thing." She did, in fact,
remain "the heart and soul of the Society" till her death, which
took place in London on 8th May, 1891. This date, known to her
followers as White Lotus Day, is observed by social and artistic
celebrations.
This extraordinary woman, whose magnificent, scarred, and
scowling features have become famous in three continents, was
possessed of startling talents, unlimited audacity, and of that
personal magnetism so noticeable in all leaders of men. Her
principal books, The Secret Doctrine, The Key to Theosophy, and
Isis Unveiled, her lesser works, and her many articles in
accredited magazines (published under the title A Modern
Panarion), carried her influence even where her restless personal
activity never reached. Her information was encyclopedic, but
altogether confused, always inaccurate, often entirely
misleading, and wholly at the mercy of her riotous imagination
and unscrupulous methods.
The chronique scandaleuse of the early history of the
Theosophical Society is in part to be found in Mr. Maskelyne's
Fraud of Theosophy Exposed. It is of no interest to us to enter
into these sordid details.
Miss Mabel Collins, however, sometime co-editress with H. P. B.
of the Theosophical periodical Lucifer, has bequeathed to us a
unique pen- portrait of her associate. We quote from Mr.
Maskelyne's book, p. 62:
"She (H. P. B.) taught me one great lesson. I learned from her
how foolish, how 'gullible,' how easily flattered human beings
are, taken en masse. Her contempt for her kind was on the same
gigantic scale as everything else about her, except her
marvellously delicate taper fingers. She had a greater power over
the weak and credulous, a greater capacity for making black
appear white, a larger waist,[5] a more voracious appetite, a
more confirmed passion for tobacco, a more ceaseless and
insatiable hatred of those whom she thought to be her enemies, a
greater disrespect for les convenances, a worse temper, a greater
command of bad language and a greater contempt for the
intelligence of her fellow-beings than I had ever supposed
possible to be contained in one person. These, I suppose, must be
reckoned as her vices, though whether a creature so indifferent
to all ordinary standards of right and wrong can be held to have
virtues or vices I know not."
Col. Olcott, especially after H. P. B.'s circumstantial stories
began to be refuted (and her romances about Tibet and the charms
of Lh'asa have been dissipated, not only by the reports of the
explorer, Mr. Rockhill, but by the observation of our own
soldiery), perceived her to be a "dual personality," at one
moment "fibbing Russian woman," at another, inspired. But many
mediums seem to oscillate between obvious fraud and the
inexplicable.
Mrs. Annie Besant
The following outline of Mrs. Besant's career is drawn front her
own Autobiography.[6]
Annie Wood was born in London on 1st October, 1847 though "three-
quarters of my blood and all my heart are Irish .... The Irish
tongue is musical to my ear, and the Irish nature dear to my
heart" (pp. 13, 14). Her father, indeed, was the son of a
Devonshire man who had married an Irish girl, and her mother's
descent was pure Irish.
Mr. Wood was a scholar and a philosopher, and "deeply and
steadily sceptical." He indulged in "light, playful mockery of
the tenets of the Christian faith"; he "partly rationalized" his
wife's "dainty and well-bred piety," till, abandoning such views
as "eternal punishment, the vicarious atonement, the
infallibility of the Bible, the equality of the Son with the
Father," etc., she found peace in the mental atmosphere of
"Jowett, Colenso and Stanley."
Mr. Wood's mother and sister were "strict Roman Catholics," but
the priest whom they "forced" into his sick-room was "promptly
ejected by the wrath of the dying man, and by the almost fierce
resolve of his wife that no messenger of the creed he detested
should trouble her darling at the last" (pp. 22, 23).
His daughter, however, took her "religion strenuously"; she was
the "stuff of which fanatics are made"; was always "too
religious." She nearly became a Catholic (p. 24), had visions and
dreams, and associated with angels, fairies, and dragons. She was
often in fancy martyred, by Roman judge and Dominican inquisitor,
on the rack and at the stake. Devoted to Paradise Lost, she
always hoped that Jesus, her "ideal Prince," would somehow save
the "beautiful shadowed Archangel" (p. 24).
Meanwhile Miss Marryat, sister of the novelist, imparted to her a
wise and practical education, and took her to Germany and France,
but failed to check her increasing tendency to mysticism and
ritual. She pores over the Fathers, studies Keble, Liddon, and
Pusey, fasts and scourges herself (p. 57). The Crucifix claims
her ecstatic love. In the Holy Week of 1866 she writes out, in
parallel columns, the Gospel accounts of the Passion, hoping thus
to serve her piety. Their "discrepancies" chill her with a first
doubt (p. 61). She stifles it. But she has seen her ghost. She
will never be the same again.
In 1867, ignorant of the nature of matrimony, and unskilled in
money matters or domestic life, she "drifts" (p. 70) into
engagement and marriage with the Rev. F. Besant, adored as a
"priest," but never loved as husband. This clergyman, precise,
methodical, authoritative, and easily angered, demanded a
submission impossible to a girl "impulsive, very hot-tempered,
and proud as Lucifer." Incredulous wonder, then indignant tears,
ended in "a proud, defiant resistance, cold and hard as iron" (p.
81).
She tried to kill thought and to vary the unromantic duties of a
home by writing; she fell ill; she brooded over the cruel and
inexplicable suffering of her children, and passed thus into a
struggle of three years and two months "which transformed me from
a Christian into an Atheist" (p. 88). Her religious doubts
increased; she contemplated suicide. She resolved "to take
Christianity as it had been taught in the churches, and carefully
and thoroughly examine its dogmas one by one, so that I should
never again say 'I believe' where I had not proved" (p. 99).
She read widely, and always on "liberal" lines: Voysey welcomed
her; Pusey repelled her; Thomas Scott, whose house was "a
veritable heretical salon" (p. 113), accepted anonymous essays
from her pen. She abandoned belief in Christ's Divinity, and,
with it, Communion.[7] In 1873 she left her husband; legal
separation was to follow (p. 118).
She now earned a miserable pittance as cook, governess, and
nurse. She studied at the British Museum and wrote heterodox
pamphlets for Thomas Scott; she faced semi- starvation with
characteristic pluck.
After facing the question: Is Christ God? and answering it, No,
she faced the ultimate problem: Does God exist? She had abandoned
prayer as a "blasphemous absurdity," and "God fades out of the
daily life of those who never pray" (p. 133).
At this crisis she happened on a copy of the National Reformer.
She inquired through it the conditions of admission to the
National Secular Society, and was told that "we can see no
logical resting- place between the entire acceptance of
authority, as in the Roman Catholic Church, and the most extreme
Rationalism." She need not profess herself an Atheist, but must
accept the principles of the Society. She sent in her name as an
active worker. It was Charles Bradlaugh who gave her her
certificate.
In the Autobiography there follows a chapter on "Atheism as I
knew and taught it" (pp. 141-175). Her atheism was "dogmatic"
only in so far as she asserted that there was no God in any of
the senses assigned or assignable to that word by human
intelligence, though underneath the Many she recognized the
One.
She had, however, to be rebuked by Bradlaugh for writing "There
is no God"; and was made to alter this. Further, her "passionate
desire for the betterment of the world, the elevation of
humanity" (p. 153), led her earnestly to seek a new basis for
morality, since she considered herself to have destroyed what she
supposed the only ethical foundation hitherto, revelation and
intuition. Her new basis was Utility (p. 154).
She discarded the Man of Sorrows, "with weary eyes gazing up to
heaven because despairing of earth," for the "fair ideal Humanity
of the Atheist . . . perfect in physical development as the
Hercules of Grecian art . . . the free man who knows no lord . .
. who relies on his own strength" (p. 158). "Virtue is its own
reward" (p. 160); and faith in Evolution shows her the "sources
of evil and the method of its extinction" (p. 164). Strong in
this "creed" and the ethical programme consequent upon it, she
lives "from 1874 to 1886, and with some misgivings to 1889" (p.
169).
Meanwhile she lectures and writes on social, political, and
freethought topics with indescribable vivacity, with a total
neglect of health, comfort, and reputation, and with that
personal communication which won for her enthusiastic devotion
when it did not provoke abuse, slander, persecution, and even
assault and physical violence.
In 1877 Dr. Charles Knowlton's pamphlet, advocating the
artificial limitation of families, brought about the prosecution
of Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant, who published the pamphlet as a
sort of test case to see whether the "population question" could
be freely discussed in England. This roused a storm of obloquy,
and Mrs. Besant was legally deprived of the custody of her
daughter as she already had been of that of her little son. The
New Malthusianism which Mrs. Besant at this period did so much to
propagate, she abandoned in 1891 (p. 237), when Theosophy had
untaught her the materialism on which alone she saw that that
practice and theory could be founded.
Chapter X of the Autobiography is well entitled "At War All
Round." "Christianity had robbed me of my child and I struck
mercilessly at it in return" (p. 245). She was constantly in the
law courts, or in violent conflict with distinguished persons on
every conceivable subject. In 1884 she turned her attention to
Socialism (p. 299), met Hyndman and Shaw, and joined the Fabians.
But the Socialists were bitterly opposed to Bradlaugh; she now
hampered, not helped, his political career, and had to resign the
co- editorship of the National Reformer, breaking thus a close
association of thirteen years (p. 321). But from this "turmoil
and stress" dawned a fairer vision, a "New Brotherhood," a
Church, to be founded largely with the cooperation of Mr. Stead.
She flung herself into organized philanthropy.
But ever "since 1886 there had been slowly growing up a
conviction that my philosophy was not sufficient; that life and
mind were other than, more than, I had dreamed" (p. 339).
Psychology, hypnotism, "fact after fact came hurtling in." "Into
the darkness shot a ray of light"-A. P. Sinnett's Occult
World.
She takes to Spiritualism finds its phenomena "indubitable" and
"real," but the "spiritualistic explanation of them was
incredible" (ibid.). One evening a "voice that was later to
become to me the holiest sound on earth," bids her take courage:
light is near. A fortnight passes, and Mr. Stead offers to her
two large volumes to review. They are H. P. B.'s Secret Doctrine.
A miracle of conversion occurs. She is introduced to H. P. B., is
fascinated, struggles against the fascination, yields, and on
10th May, 1889, is admitted as a Fellow of the Theosophical
Society (p. 344).
She sees that Science answers the how of much, the why of
nothing. Experience and intuition alone suffice, and these are
hers. "I know, by personal experiment, that the Soul exists . . .
that it can leave the body at will. . .that the great sages
spoken of by H. P. Blavatsky exist, that they wield powers and
possess knowledge before which our control of Nature . . . is as
child's play" (p. 346). Her secularist friends-Bradlaugh soberly,
Foote with virulence-denounce her; but the new period of storm is
quickly over.
She lived thereafter in "Theosophic peace," having her
headquarters at Benares. Inevitably, she was involved in the
dissensions briefly alluded to below, with special crises like
the Leadbeater one, with Indian politics of a very ill-judged
sort, and for some time lived in great isolation and eclipse
which, visitors have assured me, were very bitter to her restless
temperament despite the interior calm she sought to
cultivate.
She returned more than once to England and lectured to crowded
audiences with astonishing vivacity. But she had nothing new to
contribute, and died on 20th September, 1933. It is improbable
that details of the profound desolation of her last days will be
made public. Her death leaves the movement for which she did so
much to stand or fall by its intrinsic merits.
The Theosophical Society
The Theosophical Society was founded in New York on 17th
November, 1875, by Col. Olcott and Mme. Blavatsky. This was
immediately due to the promises of a Mr. Felt that he would
impart to the associates instruction "concerning those secret
laws of Nature which were so familiar to the Chaldeans and
Egyptians, but are totally unknown by our modern world of
science."
Mr. Felt failed, however, to redeem his pledge, and the Society
did little, in its corporate capacity, to realize its then highly
complicated programme. In 1878 it was to be amalgamated with an
Indian society; this failed also; but the founders migrated to
India and there remodelled the Society. Its objects were:
(i) To form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity,
without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or colour.
(ii) To promote the study of Aryan and other Eastern literatures,
religions, and sciences.
(iii) To investigate unexplained laws of Nature and the psychical
powers of man.
It is unnecessary to give many details about the history of the
T. S., partly because it has been so stormy and
self-contradictory, and also because a kind of law governing the
quarrels, at least after a time, can be discerned, and is indeed
indicated by Mr. A. B. Kuhn in his Theosophy, especially from p.
301 onwards. Not unnaturally, troubles grew worse almost as soon
as Mrs. Besant appeared (1888), and it was indeed unlikely that
two such forceful women as she and H. P. B. could well
cooperate.
In that year the T. S. was reorganised by a General Convention in
India as a constitutional federation of autonomous groups under a
head (H. P. B. was still president). But crises and storms
occurred "every few years" (Kuhn); the American groups gravitated
towards the ethical aspect of Theosophy, the European and Asiatic
ones towards comparative religion and psychism. In 1891 H. P. B.
died, and forthwith two divergent currents defined
themselves.
The struggle has been compared with that between State and
Church. Col. Olcott (with Mr. Sinnett) went in the rationalising
direction; they wished Theosophy to be exoteric, respectable,
disinterested in Mahatmas, refusing to "worship" H. P. B. or to
accept her words as dogma.
Mrs. Besant, at first in the company of Dr. W. Quan Judge,
remained authoritative, esoteric, Mahatmic. Col. Olcott in his
Old Diary Leaves, offers a "true history" of the T. S., and
narrates under the date 1892 the story of his own resignation,
and speaks of the "treacherous policy" and "lack of principle" of
Mr. Judge, who is said to have laboured to evict him, and to have
forged numerous letters from Mahatmas: H. S. O. adds, alluding to
one of Judge's accusations: "Without making any pretensions to
exceptional goodness, I certainly never did anything to warrant
him in making, in a forged letter, my own teacher and adored Guru
seem to say that if Mrs. Besant should carry out her intention of
visiting India, she might run the risk of my poisoning her." But
Mrs. Besant separated from Judge in 1893, and commented freely on
the provenance of Judge's Mahatma letters. He therefore issued a
manifesto declaring her headship to be at an end, for three
reasons:
"1. Mrs. Besant has practiced witchcraft and tried her weird
spells, her 'psychic experiments' (on Mr. Judge and others).
"2. Mrs. Besant has pronounced one of the letters of the Mahatma,
which was precipitated in an orthodox manner and passed on to Mr.
Sinnett, 'a fraud by H. P. B. herself, made up entirely, and not
from the Master.' If that letter be a fraud, then all the rest
sent through our old teacher are the same.
"3. Mrs. Besant, in league with a Hindu named Chakravarti and
others, has quite flooded the Society with documents from
phantasmal Mahatmas end 'black magicians.' They had all sorts of
letters sent me from India, with pretended messages from the
Master. The plot exists among the black magicians, who ever war
against the white."
Mr. Chakravarti had in fact been reducing H. P. B.'s influence
(and Mr. Judge's) upon A. B., by seeking to Brahmanise Theosophy,
especially by insisting on the acceptance of the Brahmanic ideal
of "Bliss" the moment it was attainable, whereas H. P. B. had
leaned towards the Buddhist "renunciation" of bliss in favour of
working for mankind.
America backed Judge; Europe and India condemned Olcott.
Thereupon the whole topic of Mahatmas, so fiercely insisted on at
first as a matter verifiable and indeed verified by experience,
became reduced to a matter of pure faith. Judge, The Theosophical
Movement, p. 479, wrote:
"Letters from Mahatmas prove nothing at all except to the
recipient, and then only when in his inner nature is the standard
of proof and the power of judgment. Precipitation does not prove
Mahatmas. By following the course prescribed in all ages the
inner faculties may be awakened so as to furnish the true
confirmatory evidence." [The upshot was, less and less insistence
on 'occult' phenomena.] "Occult phenomena, genuine or false,
mediumistic or adept, form no part of the legitimate pursuit of
the T. S.... (they) cannot be proved as physical phenomena can.
Mahatmas, their existence, position, and teaching, become
entirely an affair of faith" (Kuhn, p. 316).
It may be worth pausing here to observe that Theosophy, unlike
the Christian religion, never was clear whether or not it had a
"deposit," an unchangeable core or nucleus of authoritatively
revealed truth. Judge considered that it had-a "deposit" given by
the Masters to H. P. B. and transmitted by her intact to
posterity. But H. P. B. herself wavered in this, as she did in
everything else, according to her mood. "The members of the T. S.
at large are free to profess whatever religion or philosophy they
like-or none, if they so prefer-provided they are in sympathy,
etc. The Society is a philanthropical and scientific body for the
propagation of the idea of brotherhood on practical instead of
theoretical lines.... Theosophist is who Theosophist does" (Key,
p. 20; 2nd T. P. S. edition, 1890).
Similarly, morals were entirely the individual member's affair.
To become a member of the T. S. all one had to do was to give in
one's name, Mrs. Besant declaring that the first of its three
objects (see above) alone was obligatory, though emphasis was
laid on study as likely to promote that toleration which is the
necessary preliminary to brotherly love.
Mr. Kuhn says that in America the stock, so to say, of H. P. B.
is rising once more, though her doctrine is being constantly
"revised." Her works are taken down from library shelves and
thumbed. But he himself is most emphatic (p. 341) to the effect
that Theosophists are fluid, questers, nondogmatic. They have to
be channels for high ideals pictured in ancient wisdom, for a
cosmic consciousness. And this indeed is markedly the tendency on
our side of the Atlantic, though this does not imply that those
who now fight shy of "phenomena" dislike the "occult," as we
shall say below.
A direct consequence, however, of this "fluidity" of mind is the
taboo upon one doctrine only-that any existing or possible
institution is in possession of Truth in a manner even relatively
exclusive or complete. Members must be prepared to gain new
truths or revise their old beliefs no matter whence the new
illumination may arrive.
Hence, every form of Christianity can find a home within
Theosophism, save the Catholic Church, which certainly regards
itself as in possession of a unique and final revelation. It also
regards any of the truths attained to by Theosophists or anyone
else, as fragmentary, accidental, unguaranteed, and usually (in
the case of Theosophy) very badly stated.
The Church considers that special revelations granted even to her
own members must be tested by her authoritative creed, and can in
no case be more than a fuller appreciation of that creed. This is
responsible for the extreme acerbity with which Theosophists
constantly allude to the Catholic religion, save when they are
interpreting it in an "occult" way, and in fact caricaturing
it.
Theosophists, then, hold either that a "deposit" was, in some
sense, revealed anew through Masters, or a Master, to H. P. B.
(which Catholics would deny), and that at most this has become
clearer and has been better understood as time goes on: or, that
she had her limited understanding of ancient and universal
wisdom, told what she could of it to the world, a world within
which are certain people who, whether or no Masters exist, are or
become able to achieve a deeper insight into reality than others
can win, at any rate at present.
Historically, however, Theosophy has obtained its notoriety or
indeed even a minimum of attention because of its special claims,
and its offer of an esoteric lore. No Society could repose on so
wholly fluid a base as a membership of all who in any way seek
truth. Nor has the T. S. ever reposed, we repeat, on anything of
the sort. Mrs. Besant, indeed, had to distinguish very carefully
between the "neutrality" of the T. S. as such and the legitimate
occupations of its members, like herself, who was never "neutral"
in regard of anything whatsoever.
When she and others encouraged the Indians or Ceylonese to make
the most of their own religions, they knew perfectly well that
they were thus embarking on political enterprises and creating
nothing but turmoil: moreover, "social" reforms, in India or
elsewhere, though claimed, as by Mrs. Besant, as due to
theosophic enterprise in so far as they had no political basis
nor provoked more trouble than they allayed, were not really due
to any such thing; and indeed the isolation of Mrs. Besant's
later life-she had been almost a pilgrimage-centre-was a tragedy
due to that fact. When Theosophists cease to render their
lectures attractive to the ill-balanced by their lure of occult
knowledge, they will find that the residue creates no interest:
and why should it? It has been said better, and with better
reason, by almost anyone else.
To resume, Mr. Maskelyne quoted Mr. Judge, after H. P. B.'s
death, when the storm broke, in the Westminster Gazette: in 1894
Mr. E. Garrett revived the whole affair there in his "Isis very
much Un- veiled."
Mrs. Besant was "dismissed" but refused to go, saying that H. P.
B. had appointed her "successor." In 1895 the U.S.A. section
practically seceded, and in the next year Mr. Judge died, calm
and not without dignity, whereupon innumerable schisms began to
occur. A Mrs. Katherine Tingley, of California, wanted a
"Universal Brotherhood" which created more splits than anything
else did. She eliminated in 1898 both the parent and about 90 per
cent. of the membership of the T. S. from her reckonings, and
considered herself third in succession from H. P. B., Judge being
the second.
Theosophy had had no small success in Australia. A Mr. Leadbeater
(died 1st March, 1934), "esoteric" and pretentious, with no claim
to be attended to at all, none the less was responsible for great
upheavals. Older theosophists called his clients
neo-theosophists, perverting H. P. B. In 1906 a crash came. Mr.
Leadbeater was teaching young boys practices proper, it was said,
to Hindu temples. Mrs. Besant, horrified, rejected him and then
revised her horror. The storm passed but blew up again in
1922.
He then explained that relief from the sexual urge was
justifiable, lest these youths, who would soon enough grow out of
their own karma (see p. 29) should, by suppressing it, entangle
other people in it. In 1907 Col. Olcott died, miraculously
visited by Mahatmas on his death-bed. He appointed A. B. as his
successor, and she was forthwith elected.
In 1909, an unfortunate episode was begun. An Order of the "Star
in the East" was inaugurated because it had been decided that the
World- Teacher, the Lord Matreya, was incarnate in the person of
Jiddu Krishnamurti, who was, after a while, to go to Oxford and
then transform the world. He was, moreover, to come walking over
the waters between the Heads into Sydney, and an enormous
"theatre" was built overlooking the harbour.
I gather that this was afterwards let out to various
entertainments. I remember seeing it from an aeroplane. In 1929
this young man, far from devoid of modesty and good sense,
revolted, abandoned his claims, and dissolved the Order. Mrs.
Besant said he was a teacher "in his own right." Mr. Leadbeater
had, however, written a "Lives of Alcyone" (a name suggestive of
his literary level): they were the last 40 incarnations of
Krishnamurti: he also became (to the fury of many Theosophists) a
religioniser of the movement. He started a Liberal (at first
"Old") Catholic Church.
A Mr. Wedgewood was, apparently, consecrated bishop, in Holland,
and then consecrated Mr. Leadbeater, who indeed presented himself
at the Sydney Eucharistic Congress in 1928, and saw (so we were
told) auras round altars and round various people's heads
including mine. This ritualisation of Theosophy followed upon the
attempt in 1914 of Miss M. Russak to evolve a ritual based on the
"magnetic purity" of objects: she started the Temple of the Rosy
Cross which collapsed, no explanation being given, after three
years. This ritualising, religionising, of Theosophy has not won
approval.
It is not possible to give accurate statistics of the T. S. or of
its rivals. The "Golden Book" carries its history up to 1925, and
a further volume is being prepared; and a curious collection of
documents can be read in The Theosophic Society, published in
1925, containing reprints from H. S. O., A. B., and Mr. C.
Jinarajadasa, who provides also a letter from Maha-Chohan, the
great Adept, "to whose insight the future lies like an open
page." Written between 1881 and 1888, in poor English and more
definitely anti- Christian than usual, it contains nothing new
and merely promises that evidence will be given later on that the
Theosophist doctrine is "the only right one."
The actual address of the London H.Q. is 50 Gloucester Place, W.
1, where we were kindly received.
ENDNOTES
1. The most recent summary of her life is in A. B. Kuhn's
Theosophy, New York, 1930, c. 3 and following. It will probably
be impossible ever to write a proper history of her first 42
years: she is already lapsing into myth.
2. We quote from her sister, Mme. Vera de Jelihovsky, whose
evidence is given in A. P. Sinnett's Incidents.
3. "Psychologized baby," she calls him; cf. Proceedings of the
Society for Psychical Research, ix., London, 1885, p. 331. His
writings are always, certainly, very funny, the more so because
their quaintnesses are unconscious. He and he alone supplies a
note of humour to theosophic pages. Mme. Blavatsky's uproarious
sense of the comic was quite different.
4. Col. Olcott describes its beginning and history from 1875 to
1878 in Old Diary Leaves, and in three more series bearing the
same title, to 1883, 1887, and 1892 respectively. All these are
published by the Theosophical Publishing Society, and another
volume is, we believe, in preparation.
5. Mr. Maskelyne says she turned the scale at seventeen
stone.
6. Fisher Unwin, pp. 368, 1893. Her Autobiographical Sketches,
Freethought Publishing Company, pp. 169, 1885, carry her story no
further than 1879, the year of the Knowlton pamphlet
prosecution.
7. But when her mother lay dying, she refused to receive
Communion, however necessary to salvation, unless Annie took it
with her. "I would sooner be lost with darling Annie than saved
without her." Her daughter explained the case fully to Dean
Stanley, who made no difficulty about administering Communion to
mother and daughter alike (pp. 122-125).
+++++++++++++++++++
This essay was published by the London-based Catholic Truth
Society as part of its "Studies in Comparative Religion" series.
The second part of the essay will be published in the next issue
of "This Rock."
This article was taken from the February 1996 issue of "This
Rock," published by Catholic Answers, P.O. Box 17490, San Diego,
CA 92177, (619) 541-1131, $24.00 per year.
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