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The Theosophical Movement 1875-1950

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Objects and Literature

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.    II. The study of ancient and modern religions, philosophies and sciences, and the demonstration of the importance of such study; and 
III.    III. The investigation of the unexplained laws of Nature and the 1 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.

The “Three Objects” of the original Theosophical Society are now well known to all serious students of Theosophy and the subject of no dispute. They were not, however, explicitly stated at the time of the founding of the Society. Olcott, in Old Diary Leaves, a ss e rts tha t when the ide a of the Soc i e t y wa s first proposed, “the idea of Universal Brotherhood was not there,” and did not occur until, in 1878, the Society’s “sphere of influence extended so as to bring us into relations with Asiatics and their religions and social systems,” thus making “the Brotherhood 2 plank . . . a necessity, and, in fact, the corner-stone of our edifice.” The by-laws adopted in 1875 simply state, “The objects of the society are to collect and diffuse a knowledge of the laws which govern the universe.”

Discussing the Objects in Old Diary Leaves, Olcott quotes a press account of the founding of the Society, which said: “His [Olcott’s] plan was to organise a society of Occultists and begin at once to collect a library; and to diffuse infor mation 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.” This, the Colonel comments, “shows conclusively what I had in mind when proposing the formation of our Society.” As he understood it, the Society was primarily a body devoted to “occult research.”

In repeating the events of these early days, Olcott seems determined to limit the conception of the Society to the ideas which he held at that time. An almost childlike vanity convinced him that the Society was his personal “creation,” and he was quick to reject any implication that others beside himself might have possessed a larger vision of its purposes than his own. His easily wounded self-esteem caused him to fall into the habit of petty criticisms of his comrade and teacher, Madame Blavatsky, and it played a similar part in his belittling attitude toward William Q. Judge. Many of the later difficulties of the Society may be attributed to these weaknesses in Olcott’s character, which made it difficult for him to distinguish between the dynamic moral reform represented by the Theosophical movement and the organization or society of that name.

Madame Blavatsky often referred to the founding of the Society as the result of occult direction from her Teachers. In the Theosophist for July, 1882, she wrote that “our Society was founded at the direct suggestion of Indian and Tibetan adepts,” and during the course of her life she made many similar statements, both in print and in correspondence. In a letter dated December 6, 1887, she reminded Olcott that she came to the United States “to see what could be done to stop necromancy and the unconscious black magic exercised by the Spiritualists.” She continued: 

“The Society was formed, then gradually made to merge into and evolve hints of the teachings from the Secret Doctrine of the oldest school of Occult Philosophy in the whole world—a school to reform which, finally, the Lord Gautama was made to appear. These teachings could not be given 3 abruptly. They had to be instilled gradually.

As one who came to the modern world in the service of an ancient “occult school,” Madame Blavatsky was confronted by peculiar difficulties. First of all, the idea of occult or “secret” knowledge and of its possessors was virtually unknown or forgotten, with only a handful of obscure Kabalists to represent the fading tradition of the Gnosis in the West. Since the persecution of the Gnostics in the early centuries of Christian History, occasional revivals of adept teachings in Europe had been zealously suppressed by the heresy hunters of the Church, until, with the rise of scientific scepticism, belief in secret fraternities of wise men came to be classed with the fantasies of the Arabian Nights, or on a par with medieval superstition. While the phenomena of the Spiritualists had opened the way to acceptance of super-physical power, this was true only of a small minority of enthusiasts, and Spiritualism itself was rapidly becoming a fanatical sect whose believers would give occult ideas small welcome. Madame Blavatsky might win the interest of the Spiritualists by phenomenal demonstrations, but she could not retain their support without adopting the Spiritualist version of soul-survival and “spirit intercourse,” and, as she later explained, it was her mission to controvert these crude teachings by presenting the Theosophic explanation of psychic phenomena.

While in her public statements Madame Blavatsky took account of the need for a gradual introduction of the idea of 46 THE TRUE FOUNDERS adept teachers, to her friends, her intimates in the work of the Theosophical Movement, she explained much more, telling them at almost the very first of the source of her wisdom. The sages under whose direction she had traveled to America she called her “Masters”—certain Eastern adepts she had come to know during her travels in India and Tibet. These Masters, she said, were the inspirers of the Theosophical Movement, its true founders, for whom she acted as agent in the world. Olcott, as he reports in Old Diary Leaves, came under the influence of more than one of these Teachers before the Society was formed, becoming firmly convinced of their reality and wonderful powers. As a Spiritualist, however, Olcott was more easily affected by the occult phenomena of this Eastern fraternity than by their project of moral reform. His diary is a naïve record of the fascination which phenomena held for him, and of how his mind fed on dreams of startling the world with miraculous occurrences, to be produced at his suggestion by Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophical adepts. It is not remarkable, therefore, that he failed to appreciate the full meaning of the Movement at the outset, and could suppose that “the Brotherhood plank” was virtually an after thought.

The understanding, and memory, of William Q. Judge were different. Years after, writing in the Path for April, 1888, he said:

At that first meeting I proposed Colonel Olcott as President of the Society, and was made temporary Secretary myself. A Committee appointed to select a name for the infant met several times after that at Olcott’s office, 7 Beckman Street, New York, and decided upon the present name. The objects of the Society had been given to Col. Olcott by the Masters before that; they were adopted 4 and have never been changed.

In her Key to Theosophy, a text for students, Madame Blavatsky wrote that the objects of the Society “are three, and have been so from the 5 beginning.” In 1878,three months before her departure with Col. Olcott for India, she wrote to an inquirer:

“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 infinitude of the occult psychological powers hidden within his own physical man; to develop these powers; and to give him the assurance of the immortality of his divine spirit and the survival of his soul; to make him regard every man of whatever race, color, or creed, and to prove to him that the only truths revealed to man by superior men (not a god) are contained in the Vedas of the ancient Aryas of India. Finally, to demonstrate to him that there never were, will be, nor are, any miracles; that there can be nothing ‘super-natural’ in this universe, and that on 6 earth, at least, the only god is man himself.”

With the Society established and its public activities under way, Madame Blavatsky turned to the work of recording the Theosophical philosophy. In Olcott’s words:

H.P.B., then working night and day upon her first book, Isis Unveiled, soon refused to even attend our meetings, let alone do so much at them as make the smallest phenomenon—though she was continually astounding her visitors with them at her own house—and so, naturally enough, the leading Spiritualists in the Society became dissatisfied and dropped out. Forced, contrary to all my expectations, to keep up interest at the meetings and carry the whole load myself, while at the same time attending to my professional business and helping H.P.B. on “Isis,” I did what I could in the way of getting psychometers, clairvoyants, mesmerisers, and spiritual 7 mediums to show us sundry phases of psychical science.

In the beginning, the Parent Theosophical Society and the other Theosophical bodies had no literature of their own. For students of the present generation, to whom “Theosophy” means the specific doctrines found in the Theosophical books, it is difficult to realize the difference between the outward character of the Movement, then and now. These teachings, as H.P.B. wrote to Olcott in 1887, “could not be given abruptly.” Her task, quite literally, was to “incarnate” progressively in the English language an entire system of principles, metaphysical tenets, and ethical teachings, and this meant the slow elaboration of appropriate intellectual forms for 8 these ideas. Until the publication of Isis Unveiled, in 1877, the Society was limited in materials for study to Kabbalistic works, translations of Plato and the Neoplatonists, the available books on Oriental philosophy and religion, the Spiritualist literature, writings of the Christian mystics, and various works on magic, mesmerism, hypnotism and related subjects. Isis, as its sub-title states, was to be “A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology.” Actually, it was an attempt to gather into a single work those elements of the cultural heritage of the West which could serve as the foundation of a new religious philosophy, and to unite them by means of the occult and spiritual teachings she had learned in the East. As part of Madame Blavatsky’s purpose was to declare the reality of occult forces and secret knowledge, she began her preface to Isis Unveiled with these words:

The work now submitted to public judgment is the fruit of a somewhat intimate acquaintance with Eastern adepts and study of their science. It is offered to such as are willing to accept truth wherever it may be found, and to defend it, even looking popular prejudice straight in the face. It is an attempt to aid the student to detect the vital principles which underlie the philosophical systems of old.

That “popular prejudice” would be aroused by a book so introduced was a foregone conclusion. Who were these mysterious “Eastern adepts” who dared to challenge the accepted truths of religious orthodoxy, and to question the conclusions of Western Science? Such a book could expect support only from those open-minded enough to form their judgments of it by a careful study of its contents, instead of invoking orthodox opinions. The evidence for the existence of “adepts” presented by Madame Blavatsky was their philosophy—the “master-key” referred to in her title. She might, of course, have suppressed all mention of these Teachers whom she met in the Orient, and have presented simply a synthesis of religious philosophy and scientific conceptions, as the culmination of painstaking research. Little or no animosity against her would have resulted from this method. Her book would have been classed with many others of a similar character, eclectic compilations of religious ideas drawn from many obscure sources, and fused into the philosophic unity of speculative metaphysics. But this Madame Blavatsky would not, could not, do. The concept of adeptship, of perfected human beings, was a neces sary conclusion from the logic of spiritual evolution; it was also the key to her explanation of the phenomena of the Spiritual istic mediums. A further reading of the Preface to Isis shows 49 THE THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT how inseparable in this book are its philosophic teachings from the idea of human perfection. She continues:

When, years ago, we first travelled over the East, exploring the penetralia of its deserted sanctuaries, two saddening and ever recurring questions oppressed our thoughts: Where, WHO, WHAT is GOD? Who ever saw the IMMORTAL SPIRIT of man, so as to be able to assure himself of man’s immortality?

It was while most anxious to solve these perplexing problems that we came into contact with certain men, endowed with such mysterious powers and such profound knowledge that we may truly designate them as the sages of the Orient. To their instructions we lent a ready ear. They showed us that by combining science with religion, the existence of God and immortality of man’s spirit may be demonstrated like a problem of Euclid. For the first time we received the assurance that the Oriental philosophy has room for no other faith than an absolute and immovable faith in the omnipotence of man’s own immortal self. We were taught that this omnipotence comes from the kinship of man’s spirit with the Universal Soul—God! The latter, they said, can never be demonstrated but by the former. Man-spirit proves God-spirit, as the one drop of water proves a source from which it must have come. Tell one who had never seen water, that there is an ocean of water, and he must accept it on faith or reject it altogether. But let one drop fall upon his hand, and he then has the fact from which all the rest may be inferred. After that he could by degrees understand that a boundless and fathomless ocean of water existed. Blind faith would no longer be necessary; he would have supplanted it with KNOWLEDGE. When one sees mortal man displaying tremendous capabilities, controlling the forces of nature and opening up to view the world of spirit, the reflective mind is overwhelmed with the conviction that if one man’s spiritual Ego can do this much, the capabilities of the FATHER SPIRIT must be relatively as much vaster as the whole ocean surpasses the single drop in volume and potency. Ex nihlo nihil fit; prove the soul of man by its wondrous powers— you have proved God!

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, as the basis of acceptance or rejection of the Theosophical method of inquiry.

From the idea of highly evolved human beings as the source of her teaching, Madame Blavatsky passed, in the introductory chapter of Isis Unveiled, to the need for study of ancient religions. Reviewing the corruptions of Western religion and the reaction of animalism taught by science, she introduced the subject of Spiritualism as offering “a possible last refuge of compromise between the two.” But neither religion nor science was competent to explain the phenomena of the Spiritualists. She comments:

. . . while the clergy, following their own interpretations of the Bible, and science its self-made Codex of possibilities in nature, refuse it [Spiritualism] a fair hearing, real science and true religion are silent, and gravely wait further developments. 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 

the plateau of Platonic philosophy, Isis Unveiled explores the e n t i r e continent of human experience and thought, gathering evidence for the few fundamental ideas which constitute the first principles of the Theosophical philosophy. The existence of Adepts and their common philosophy of moral regeneration is the central theme. Also discussed are the missions and teachings of great adepts through history, as the source of the universal belief in gods, Saviors and “divine incarnations”; their teachings regarding the “mysteries” are investigated as ancient sources which provided the materials for the greatest philosophical and ethical treatises. Madame Blavatsky shows that everywhere, from the remotest antiquity, there are abundant indications that the arts and sciences, as re-discovered in our times, were known and practiced in the distant past; and further, that the ancients knew many things which are hidden from modern civilization.

The postulates laid down in Isis Unveiled form the foundation for subsequent theosophical study. The most important among them may be summarized as follows: 
I.    The reality of man as a spiritual being, with a life independent of as well as in a physical body. 
II.    II. An almost incredible antiquity for the human race, through millions of years of rises and falls in civilization, the vicissitudes of which are governed by the great law of Cycles (Karma), which law does not affect all mankind at one and the same time, thus explaining the existence of the most advanced races side by side with tribes sunk in savagery. 
III.    III. An intellectual and spiritual evolution as well as the physical evolution of modern science, the former proceeding under well-defined principles of soul-development.
The last chapter of the second volume of Isis provides a recapitulation of the entire work, in ten basic propositions, which state in substance: (1) There is no miracle. Everything that happens is the result of law—eternal and ever active. (2) Nature is triune: there is a visible, objective nature; an invisible, indwelling, energizing nature, the exact model of the other, and its vital principle; and, above these two, spirit, source of all forces, alone eternal and indestructible. The lower two constantly change; the higher third does not. (3) Man is also triune: he has his objective, physical body; his vitalizing astral body (or soul), the real man; and these two are brooded over and illuminated by the third—the sovereign, the immortal spirit. When the real man succeeds in merging himself with the latter, he becomes an immortal entity. (4) Magic, as a science, is the knowledge of these principles, and of the way by which the omniscience and omnipotence of the spirit and its control over nature’s forces may be acquired by the individual while still in the body. Magic, as an art, is the application of this knowledge in practice. (5) Arcane knowledge misapplied, is sorcery; beneficently used, true magic or Wisdom. (6) Mediumship is the opposite of adeptship; the medium is the passive instrument of foreign influences, the adept actively controls himself and all inferior potencies. (7) All things that ever were, that are, or will be, having their record upon the astral light, or tablet of the unseen universe, the initiated adept, by using the vision of his own spirit, can know all that has been known or can be known. (8) Races of men differ in spiritual gifts as in color, stature, or any other external quality; among some peoples seership naturally prevails, among others mediumship. (9) One phase of magical skill is the voluntary and conscious withdrawal of the inner man (astral form) from the outer man (physical body). In the cases of some mediums withdrawal occurs, but it is unconscious and involuntary. (10) The corner-stone of magic is an intimate practical knowledge of magnetism and electricity, their qualities, correlations, and potencies. Especially necessary is a familiarity with their effects in and upon the animal kingdom and man. To sum up all in a few words, Magic is spiritual wisdom; nature, the material ally, pupil and servant of the magician. One common vital principle pervades all things, and this is controllable by the perfected human will. 

These ideas were not presented by Madame Blavatsky as merely theoretical considerations, but as principles of practical explanation to which she constantly referred. Applying them to Spiritualist mediums, she showed that their phe nomena could be accounted for as the involuntary productions of aberrant psychic factors in man’s nature. The various forms of clairvoyance are explained as functions of the astral light.

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 to assert that she was a fraud and a charlatan. Actually, the best evidence for the sincerity of Madame Blavatsky is her courageous study of the psychological and temporal power of religious institutions. One who dares to examine the hoary sanctions of revealed religion invariably exposes himself to vindictive retaliations, and all history is witness to the fact that hell hath no fury like an angry priest, whose authority to speak in the name of the Deity has been challenged, and whose casuistry is subjected to the light of reason.

Isis Unveiled was a book which could be understood, and would be welcomed, only by those few who were prepared, or at least willing, to do their own thinking. It was a text for those who had resolved to make the Objects of the Theosophical Society the guiding principles of their own lives. Its author dedicated its two volumes to the Theosophical Society, which was founded, she declared, “to study the subjects on which they treat.”