Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
Theosophy An Introductory Study Course
By John Algeo
The Ancient Wisdom In The Modern World
THEOSOPHY AND THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY are related, but different, as was noted in the preceding chapter. Theosophy is a formulation for our days of the Ancient Wisdom or Wisdom Tradition of our species. In the following chapters, we consider some of the basic concepts of this Wisdom Tradition in more detail. But in this chapter we look at the Theosophical Society as an organization to see how it transmits the Wisdom Tradition so that it is available for all of us to use it in our quest for understanding and to transform our lives.
HISTORY OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
The Theosophical Society was founded in New York City in 1875 by a number of persons who had gathered to discuss matters of mutual interest relating to the wisdom of the ancients, the unexplained mysteries of nature around us, and the implications of such things for contemporary people. Chief among these founders of the Society were Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott, who called themselves the “Theosophical Twins” because of the close fraternal relationship that developed between them.
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was a Russian woman who became a naturalized American citizen. She came of Russian nobility on her mother’s side and of Russian military officers on her father’s side. Her mother was a novelist referred to as the George Sand of Russia because of the novels of social protest that she wrote. HPB, as she preferred to be called, had married as a young woman, but left the comfortable life of the Russian upper classes
to seek an explanation for life’s mysteries by traveling around the world in search of wisdom. She eventually came into touch with some teachers, “Masters of the Wisdom,” of whom she had had dreams and visions since her childhood and who trained her in the tradition of which they were the heirs and custodians. They sent her to America for the purpose of founding an organization to serve as a nucleus to carry on the work of disseminating their wisdom to humanity.
Henry Steel Olcott was a lawyer who served his country during the American Civil War as an inspector, ferreting out fraud in the procurement of supplies (and is therefore often called “Colonel Olcott”). After the assassination of President Lincoln, he was on the commission that investigated it. Olcott had a varied career, for example publishing a seminal work on the cultivation of sugar-producing plants and editing a history of America. He was a feature writer for New York newspapers and, as such, followed current events. In the later nineteenth century, Spiritualism (supposed contact with the
souls of the dead through mediums) was a matter of intense interest; and some remarkable spiritualistic phenomena were being reported at a farm in Vermont. Olcott therefore went to Vermont to write a story on those phenomena, and there he met HPB, who had also come to witness the happenings and to meet Olcott.
Blavatsky and Olcott immediately struck up a friendship, and on their return to New York, Olcott began to attend gatherings at HPB’s apartment, where conversation often turned to esoteric and exotic subjects. When it was proposed to found a society for the further study of such matters, Olcott was elected President and HPB Corresponding Secretary. The new organization was called the Theosophical Society, a name chosen to link the new organization with an ancient history of movements going back to the Neoplatonists of Alexandria.
The Society received a good bit of publicity in the newspapers, particularly when it sponsored the first public cremation in America. One of its members, the Baron de Palm, had requested cremation in his will, and to honor that request, Olcott arranged the use of the first crematory in America, built by a Pennsylvania doctor for his own eventual use.
But Olcott and HPB soon moved to the East. They had entered into correspondence with Buddhists in Sri Lanka and with Hindus in India and felt a call to extend Theosophical work into those countries. So in 1879 the two Founders sailed to south Asia, first establishing themselves in Bombay, but traveling widely to further the work of the new Society throughout the subcontinent. Three years later, they purchased an estate called Adyar near Madras (now called Chennai) in southern India for the international headquarters of the Society. Olcott became very active in educational and social work on behalf of the exploited peoples of Sri Lanka and in promoting the worldwide revival of Buddhism. HPB continued an intense production of literary works, which would eventually fill more than twenty thick volumes.
Of the “Theosophical Twins,” HPB was the idea woman who was largely responsible for formulating modern Theosophy, but she was also the object of curiosity by Europeans, who were intrigued by her ability to be the catalyst for phenomenal events of several kinds. Olcott was the organization man who mothered the Society through its first generation, but he was also the chief public spokesperson for Theosophy and the Society in Asia. HPB focused on the esoteric aspects of Theosophy; Olcott, on its public aspects and its role as a bridge between different cultures and religions. In America, William Quan Judge, another founding member, became the most prominent worker for the Society.
Annie Besant, an English social reformer and renowned orator, became HPB’s successor as a charismatic leader of Theosophical thought after the latter’s death in 1891; and in 1907 Besant succeeded Olcott as the second international President of the Society. She adopted and fostered the Indian philosopher Krishnamurti, who grew up to be an independent teacher but whose teachings indelibly reflect his early Theosophical experience. Besant is remembered in India as an advocate of education and a promoter of Indian home rule. She became the first woman and non-Indian to be elected President of the Indian National Congress. International Presidents after Besant included the Englishmen George Arundale and John Coats, the Sri Lankan C. Jinarajadasa, and the Indians Sri Ram and Radha Burnier.
The Theosophical Society has included among its members Abner Doubleday (the legendary founder of baseball), Thomas Edison (the inventor), Frank Baum (the author of The Wizard of Oz), William Butler Yeats (the Anglo-Irish poet), Piet Mondrian (the Dutch abstract painter), Alexander Scriabin (the Russian composer), Mohandas Gandhi (the Indian independence leader), and J. Nehru (the Prime Minister of India). Many other leaders of modern thought were influenced by Theosophy, some very deeply; prominent examples are James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Maria Montessori, and Vassily Kandinsky.
The role of Theosophy in forming twentieth-century thought is still to be described fully, but it was of considerable importance.
