Theosophy
A MODERN REVIVAL OF
ANCIENT WISDOM
Alvin Boyd Kuhn
Electronically typed and edited by
Juan Schoch for educational research purposes. I can be contacted at pc93@bellsouth.net. I will be greatly indebted to the
individual who can put me in touch with the Estate of Dr. Alvin Boyd Kuhn
and/or any of the following works:
The Mighty Symbol of the Horizon,
Nature as Symbol, The Tree of Knowledge, The Rebellion of the Angels, The Ark
and the Deluge, The True Meaning of Genesis, The Law of the Two Truths, At
Sixes and Sevens, Adam Old and New, The Real and the Actual, Immortality: Yes -
But How?, The Mummy Speaks at Last, Symbolism of the Four Elements, Through
Science to Religion, Creation in Six Days?, Rudolph Steiner's "Mystery of
Golgotha", Krishnamurti and Theosophy, A. B. Kuhn's graduation address at
Chambersburg Academy "The Lyre of Orpheus", A. B. Kuhn's unpublished
autobiography, Great Pan Returns.
STUDIES IN RELIGION AND CULTURE
AMERICAN RELIGION SERIES II
THEOSOPHY
PREFACE
Since this work was designed to be one of a series of studies in American
religions, the treatment of the subject was consciously limited to those
aspects of Theosophy which are in some manner distinctively related to
The author wises to express his obligation to several persons without whose
assistance the enterprise would have been more onerous and less successful. His
thanks are due in largest measure to Professor Roy F. Mitchell of New York
University, and to Mrs. Mitchell, for placing at his disposal much of their
time and of their wide knowledge of Theosophical material; to Mr. L. W. Rogers,
President of the American Theosophical Society, Wheaton, Illinois, for cordial
vii
co-operation in the matter of the questionnaire, and to the many members of the
Society who took pains to reply to the questions; to Mr. John Garrigues, of the
United Lodge of Theosophists, New York, for valuable data out of his great
store of Theosophic information, and to several of the ladies at the U.L.T.
Reading Room for library assistance; to Professor Louis H. Gray, of Columbia
University, for technical criticism in Sanskrit terminology; to Mr. Arthur E.
Christy, of Columbia University, for data showing Emerson's indebtedness to Oriental
philosophy; and to Professor Herbert W. Schneider, of Columbia University, for
his painstaking criticism of the study throughout.
A. B. K.
September, 1930
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
|
I. THEOSOPHY, AN ANCIENT TRADITION . . . . . . |
1 |
|
II. THE AMERICAN BACKGROUND OF THEOSOPHY . . . . |
18 |
|
III. HELENA P. BLAVATSKY: HER LIFE AND PSYCHIC |
|
|
CAREER . . . . . . . . . . . . |
43 |
|
IV. FROM SPIRITUALISM TO THEOSOPHY . . . . . . |
89 |
|
V. |
115 |
|
VI. THE MAHATMAS AND THEIR LETTERS . . . . . . |
147 |
|
VII. STORM, WRECK, AND REBUILDING . . . . . . |
176 |
|
VIII. THE SECRET DOCTRINE . . . . . . . . . |
194 |
|
IX. EVOLUTION, REBIRTH, AND KARMA . . . . . . |
232 |
|
X. ESOTERIC WISDOM AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE . . . . |
253 |
|
XI. THEOSOPHY IN ETHICAL PRACTICE . . . . . . |
265 |
|
XII. LATER THEOSOPHICAL HISTORY . . . . . . . |
301 |
|
XIII. SOME FACTS AND FIGURES . . . . . . . . |
341 |
|
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . |
351 |
|
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
375 |
ix
(blank)
x
THEOSOPHY
CHAPTER I
In the mind of the general public Theosophy is classed with Spiritualism, New
Thought, Unity and Christian Science, as one of the modern cults. It needs but
a slight acquaintance with the facts in the case to reveal that Theosophy is
amenable to this classification only in the most superficial sense. Though the
Theosophical Society is recent, theosophy, in the sense of an esoteric
philosophic mystic system of religious thought, must be ranked as one of the
most ancient traditions. It is not a mere cult, in the sense of being the
expression of a quite specialized form of devotion, practice, or theory,
propagated by a small group. It is a summation and synthesis of many cults of
all times. It is as broad and universal a motif, let us say, as mysticism. It
is one of the most permanent phases of religion, and as such it has welled up
again and again in the life of mankind. It is that "wisdom of the
divine" which has been in the world practically continuously since ancient
times. The movement of today is but another periodical recurrence of a
phenomenon which has marked the course of history from classical antiquity. Not
always visible in outward organization--indeed never formally organized as
Theosophy under that name until now--the thread of theosophic teaching and
temperament can be traced in almost unbroken course from ancient times to the
present. It has often been subterranean, inasmuch as esotericism and secrecy
have been essential elements of its very constitution. The modern presentation
of theosophy differs from all the past ones chiefly in that it has lifted the veil
that cloaked its teachings in mystery, and offered alleged secrets freely to
the world. Theosophists tell
1
us that before the launching of the latest "drive" to promulgate
Theosophy in the world, the councils of the Great White Brotherhood of Adepts,
or Mahatmas, long debated whether the times were ripe for the free propagation
of the secret Gnosis; whether the modern world, with its Western dominance and
with the prevalence of materialistic standards, could appropriate the sacred
knowledge without the risk of serious misuse of high spiritual forces, which
might be diverted into selfish channels. We are told that in these councils it
was the majority opinion that broadcasting the Ancient Wisdom over the
Occidental areas would be a veritable casting of pearls before swine; yet two
of the Mahatmas settled the question by undertaking to assume all karmic debts
for the move, to take the responsibility for all possible disturbances and ill
effects.
If we look at the matter through Theosophic eyes, we are led to believe that
when in the fall of 1875 Madame Blavatsky, Col. H. S. Olcott, and Mr. W. Q.
Judge took out the charter for the Theosophical Society in
To understand the periodical recurrence of the theosophic tendency in history
it is necessary to note two cardinal features of the Theosophic theory of
development. The first is that progress in religion, philosophy, science, or
art is not a direct advance, but in advance in cyclical swirls. When you view
progress in small sections, it may appear to be a development in a straight
line; but if your gaze takes in the
2
whole course of history, you will see the outline of a quite different method
of progress. You will not see uninterrupted unfolding of human life, but
advances and retreats, plunges and recessions. Spring does not emerge from
winter by a steady rise of temperature, but by successive rushes of heat, each
carrying the season a bit ahead. Movement in nature is cyclical and periodic.
History progresses through the rise and fall of nations. The true symbol of
progress is the helix, motion round and round, but tending upward at each
swirl. But we must have large perspectives if we are to see the gyrations of
the helix.
The application of this interpretation of progress to philosophy and religion
is this: the evolution of ideas apparently repeats itself at intervals time after
time, a closed circuit of theories running through the same succession at many
points in history. Scholars have discerned this fact in regard to the various
types of government: monarchy working over into oligarchy, which shifts to
democracy, out of which monarchy arises again. The round has also been observed
in the domain of philosophy, where development starts with revelation and
proceeds through rationalism to empiricism, and, in revulsion from that, swings
back to authority or mystic revelation once more. Hegel's theory that progress
was not in a straight line but in cycles formed by the manifestation of thesis,
antithesis, and then synthesis, which in turn becomes the ground of a new
thesis, is but a variation of this general theme.
Theosophists, then, regard their movement as but the renaissance of the
esoteric and occult aspect of human thought in this particular swing of the
spiral.
The second aspect of the occult theory of development is a method of
interpretation which claims to furnish a key to the understanding of religious
history. Briefly, the theory is that religions never evolve; they always
degenerate. Contrary to the assumptions of comparative mythology, they do not
originate in crude primitive feelings or ideas, and then transform themselves
slowly into loftier and purer ones. They begin lofty and pure, and deteriorate
into crasser
3
forms. They come forth in the glow of spirituality and living power and later
pass into empty forms and lifeless practices. From the might of the spirit they
contract into the materialism of the letter. No religion can rise above its
source, can surpass its founder; and the more exalted the founder and his
message, the more certainly is degeneration to be looked for. There is always
gradual change in the direction of obscuration and loss of primal vision,
initial force. Religions tend constantly to wane, and need repeated revivals
and reformations. Nowhere is it possible to discern anything remotely like
steady growth in spiritual unfolding.
It is the occult theory that what we find when we search the many religions of
the earth is but the fragments, the dissociated and distorted units of what
were once profound and coherent systems. It is difficult to trace in the
isolated remnants the contour of the original structure. But it is this
completed system which the Theosophist seeks to reconstruct from the scattered
remnants.
Religion, then, is a phase of human life which is alleged to operate on a
principle exactly opposite to evolution, and theosophy believes this key makes
it intelligible. Religions never claim to have evolved from human society; they
claim to be gifts to humanity. They come to man with the seal of some divine
authority and the stamp of supreme perfection. Not only are they born above the
world, but they are brought to the world by the embodied divinity of a great
Messenger, a Savior, a World-Teacher, a Prophet, a Sage, a Son of God. These
bring their own credentials in the form of a divine life. Their words and works
bespeak the glory that earth can not engender.
The two phases of theosophic explanation can now be linked into a unified
principle. Religions come periodically; and they are given to men from high
sources, by supermen. The theory of growth from crude beginnings to
spirituality tacitly assumes that man is alone in the universe and left
entirely to his own devices; that he must learn everything for himself from
experience, which somehow enlarges his
4
faculties and quickens them for higher conceptions. This view, says occultism, does
unnatural violence to the fundamental economy of the universe, wrenching
humanity out of its proper setting and relationship in an order of harmony and
fitness. Humankind is made to be the sole manipulator of intelligence, the
favored beneficiary of evolution, and as such is severed from its natural
connection with the rest of the cosmic scheme. So small and poor a view does
pitiable injustice to the wealth of the cosmic resources. Bruno, Copernicus,
and modern science have taught us that man is not the darling of creation, nor
the only child in the cosmic family, the pampered ward of the gods. Far from
it; he is one among the order of beings, occupying his proper place in relation
to vaster hierarchies than he has knowledge of, above and below him.1
What is the character of that relationship? It is, says the esoteric teaching,
that of guardian and ward; of a young race in the tutelage of an older; of
infant humanity being taught by more highly evolved beings, whose intelligence
is to that of early man as an adept's to a tyro's. It is the relationship of
children to parents or guardians. Throughout our history we have been the wards
of an elder race, or at least of the elder brothers of our own race. The
members of a former evolutionary school have turned back often, like the
guardians in Plato's cave allegory, to instruct us in vital knowledge. The
wisdom of the ages, the knowledge of the very Ancient of Days, has at times
been handed down to us. The human family has produced some advanced Sages,
Seers, Adepts, Christs, and these have cared for the less-advanced classes, and
have from time to time given out a body of deeper wisdom than man's own.
Theosophy claims that it
______________
1 The same idea is voiced by William James (Pragmatism, p. 299): "I
thoroughly disbelieve, myself, that our human experience is the highest form of
experience extant in the universe. I believe rather that we stand in much the
same relation to the whole of the universe as our canine and feline pets do to
the whole of human life. They inhabit our drawing rooms and libraries. They
take part in scenes of whose significance they have no inkling. They are merely
tangent to curves of history, the beginnings and ends and forms of which pass
wholly beyond their ken. So we are tangent to the wider life of things."
5
is the traditional memory of these noble characters, their lives and messages,
which has left the ancient field strewn with the legends of its Gods, Kings,
Magi, Rishis, Avatars and its great semi-divine heroes. Such wisdom and
knowledge as they could wisely and safely impart they have handed down, either
coming themselves to earth from more ethereal realms, or commissioning
competent representatives. And thus the world has periodically been given the
boon of a new religion and a new stimulus from the earthly presence of a savior
regarded as divine. And always the gospel contained milk for the babes and meat
for grown men. There was both an exoteric and an esoteric doctrine. The former
was broadcast among the masses, and did its proper and salutary work for them;
the latter, however, was imparted only to the fit and disciplined initiates in
secret organizations. Much real truth was hidden behind the veil of allegory;
myth and symbol were employed. This aggregate of precious knowledge, this
innermost heart of the secret teaching of the gods to mankind, is, needless to
say, the Ancient Wisdom--is Theosophy. Or at least Theosophy claims the key to
all this body of wisdom. It has always been in the world, but never publicly
promulgated until now.
To trace the currents of esoteric influence in ancient religious literature
would be the work of volumes. Theosophic or kindred doctrines are to be found
in a large number of the world's sacred books or bibles. The lore of
Philosophy, not less than religion, bears the stamp of theosophical ideology.
Traces of the occult doctrine permeate most of the thought systems of the past.
All histories of philosophy in the western world begin, with or without brief
apology to the venerable systems of the Orient, with Thales of Miletus and the
early Greek thinkers of about the sixth century B.C. In the dim background
stand Homer and Hesiod and Pindar and the myths of the Olympian pantheon.
Contemporary religious faiths, too, such as the cult of
6
Pythagoreanism,2 and the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries, influenced
philosophical speculation.
It needs no extraordinary erudition to trace the stream of esoteric teaching
through the field of Greek philosophy. What is really surprising is that the
world of modern scholarship should have so long assumed that Greek speculation
developed without reference to the wide-spread religious cult systems which
transfused the thought of the near-Eastern nations. Esotericism was an
ingrained characteristic of the Oriental mind and
Thales' fragments contain Theosophical ideas in his identification of the physis
with the soul of the universe, and in his affirmation that "the
materiality of physis is supersensible." Thales thought that this physis
or natural world was "full of gods."4 Both these conceptions of
the impersonal and the personal physis, the latter a reasoning substance
approaching Nous, came out of the continuum of the group soul, as a
vehicle of magic power.5 Man was believed to stand in a sympathetic relation to
this nature or physis, and the deepening of his sympathetic attitude was
supposed to give him nothing less than magical control over its elements.
Prominent among the Orphic tenets was that of reincarnation, possibly a
transference to man of the annual rebirth
______________
2 See in particular such works as From Religion to Philosophy, by F. M.
Cornford (London, 1912), and From Orpheus to Paul, by Prof. Vittorio D.
Macchioro (New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1930).
3 "The work of philosophy thus appears as an elucidation and clarifying of
religious material. It does not create its new conceptual tools; it rather
discovers them by ever subtler analysis and closer definition of the elements
confused in the original datum."--From Religion to Philosophy, by
F. M. Cornford, p. 126.
4 Ibid., pp. 94 ff.
5 "Physis was not an object, but a metaphysical substance. It differs
from modern ether in being thought actual. It is important to notice that Greek
speculation was not based on observation of external nature. It is more easily
understood as an echo from the Orphic teachings."--Ibid., pp. 136
ff.
7
in nature. Worship of heavenly bodies as aiding periodical harvests found a
place here also.6 The conception of the wheel of Dike and Moira, the allotted
flow and apportionment in time as well as place, of all things, nature and man
together, was underlying in the ancient Greek mind. Persian occult ideas may
have influenced the Orphic systems.7
Anaximander added to the scientific doctrines of Thales the idea of
compensatory retribution for the transgression of Moira's bounds which suggests
Karma. The sum of Heraclitus' teaching is the One Soul of the universe, in
ever-running cycles of expression-"Fire8 lives the death of air, air lives
the death of fire; earth lives the death of water, water lives the death of
earth."9 And interwoven with it is a sort of justice which resembles
karmic force.10
Dionysiac influence brought the theme of reincarnation prominently to the fore
in metaphysical thinking.11
Socrates, in the Phaedo, speaks of "the ancient doctrine that souls
pass out of this world to the other, and there exist, and then come back hither
from the dead, and are born again." In Hesiod's Works and Days
there is the image of the Wheel of Life. In the mystical tradition there was
prominent the wide-spread notion of a fall of higher forms of life into the
human sphere of limitation and misery. The Orphics definitely taught that the
soul of man fell from the stars into the prison of this earthly body, sinking
from the upper regions of fire and light into the misty darkness of this dismal
vale. The fall is ascribed to some original sin, which
______________
6 "The fate of man was sympathetically related to the circling lights of
heaven."--Ibid., p. 171.
7 Ibid., pp. 176 ff.
8 The universal soul substance.
9 Quoted by F. M. Cornford, From Religion to Philosophy, p. 185.
10 For the Orphic origin of Heraclitus' philosophy consult From Orpheus to
Paul, by Prof. Vittorio D. Macchioro, pp. 169 ff.
11 "The most primitive of these (cardinal doctrines of mysticism) is
Reincarnation (palingenesis). This life, which is perpetually renewed, is
reborn out of that opposite state called 'death,' into which, at the other end
of its arc, it passes again. In this idea of Reincarnation . . . we have the
first conception of a cycle of existence, a Wheel of Life, divided into two
hemicycles of light and darkness, through which the one life, or soul,
continuously revolves."--From Religion to Philosophy, p. 160.
8
entailed expulsion from the purity and perfection of divine existence and had
to be expiated by life on earth and by purgation in the nether world.12
The philosophies of Parmenides, Empedocles, and Plato came directly out of the
Pythagorean movement.13 Aristotle described Empedocles' poems as
"Esoteric," and it is thought that Parmenides' poems were similarly
so. Parmenides' theory that the earth is the plane of life outermost, most
remotely descended from God, is re-echoed in theosophic schematism. Also his
idea--"The downward fall of life from the heavenly fires is countered by
an upward impulse which 'sends the soul back from the seen to the
unseen'"--completes the Theosophic picture of outgoing and return.
Parmenides "was really the 'associate' of a Pythagorean, Ameinias, son of
Diochartas, a poor but noble man, to whom he afterwards built a shrine, as to a
hero."14 "Strabo describes Parmenides and Zeno as
Pythagoreans."15 Cornford's comment on the philosophy of Empedocles leaves
little doubt as to its origin in the Mysteries.16 Strife causes the fall, love
brings the return.
______________
12 "Caught in the wheel of birth, the soul passes through the forms of man
and beast and plant."--From Religion to Philosophy, p. 178.
13 From Religion to Philosophy, p. 197. Also From Orpheus to Paul,
Chapter VIII.
14 John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (
15 Ibid., p. 156.
16 "That the doctrine (exile of the soul from God) . . . was not invented
by Empedocles is certain from the fact that the essential features of it are
found in Pindar's second Olympian, written for Theron of Acragas, where
Empedocles was born, at a date when Empedocles was a boy. Throughout the course
of that majestic Ode revolves the Wheel of Time, Destiny and Judgment. The
doctrine can be classed unhesitatingly as 'Orphic.' The soul is conceived as
falling from the region of light down into the 'roofed-in cave,' the 'dark
meadow of Ate.' (Frag. 119, 120, 121.) This fall is a penalty for sin,
flesh-eating or oath-breaking. Caught in the Wheel of Time, the soul,
preserving its individual identity, passes through all shapes of life. This
implies that man's soul is not 'human'; human life is only one of the shapes it
passes through. Its substance is divine and immutable, and it is the same
substance as all other soul in the world. In this sense the unity of all life
is maintained; but, on the other hand, each soul is an atomic individual, which
persists throughout its ten thousand years' cycle of reincarnations. The soul
travels the round of the four elements: 'For I have been ere now, a body, and a
girl, a bush (earth), a bird (air) and a dumb fish in the sea.' (Frag. 117.)
These four elements compose the bodies which it successively inhabits.
"The soul is further called 'an exile from God' and a wanderer, and its
offence,
9
Empedocles was a member of a Pythagorean society or school, for Diogenes tells
us that he and Plato were expelled from the organization for having revealed
the secret teachings.17
Of Pythagoras as a Theosophic type of philosopher there is no need to speak at
any length. What is known of Pythagoreanism strongly resembles Theosophy.
As to Socrates, it is interesting to note that Cornford's argument "points
to the conclusion that Socrates was more familiar with Pythagorean ideas than
has commonly been supposed."18 Socrates gave utterance to many Pythagorean
sentiments and he was associated with members of the Pythagorean community at
Phlious, near
R. D. Hicks comments on Plato's "imaginative sympathy with the whole mass
of floating legend, myth and dogma, of a partly religious, partly ethical
character, which found a wide, but not universal acceptance, at an early time
in the Orphic and Pythagorean associations and brotherhoods."19
"The Platonic myths afford ample evidence that Plato was perfectly
familiar with all the leading features of this strange creed. The divine origin
of the soul, its fall from bliss and the society of the gods, its long
pilgrimage of penance through hundreds of generations, its task of purification
from earthly pollution, its
______________
which entailed this exile, is described as 'following Strife,' 'putting trust
in Strife.' At the end of the cycle of births, men may hope to 'appear among
mortals as prophets, song-writers, physicians and princes; and thence they rise
up, as gods exalted in honor, sharing the hearth of the other immortals and the
same table, free from human woes, delivered from destiny and harm.' (Frags.
146, 147.) Thus the course of the soul begins with separation from God, and
ends in reunion with him, after passing through all the moirai of the
elements."--From Religion to Philosophy, p. 228.
17 By comparison with the passage expounding Empedocles' theory of rebirth
(supra), the following assumes significance: "From these (Golden Verses
of Pythagoras) we learn that it had some striking resemblance to the
beliefs prevalent in
18 From Religion to Philosophy, p. 247.
19 R. D. Hicks: Introduction to Aristotle's De Anima, (
10
reincarnation in successive bodies, its upward and downward progress, and the
law of retribution for all offences . . ."20
There is evidence pointing to the fact that Plato was quite familiar with the
Mystery teachings, if not actually an initiate.21 In the Phaedrus he
says:
". . . being initiated into those Mysteries which it is lawful to call the
most blessed of all Mysteries . . . we were freed from the molestation of evils
which otherwise await us in a future period of time. Likewise in consequence of
this divine initiation, we become spectators of entire, simple, immovable and
blessed visions resident in the pure light."22
And his immersion in the prevalent esoteric attitude is hinted at in another
passage:
"You say that, in my former discourse, I have not sufficiently explained
to you the nature of the First. I purposely spoke enigmatically, for in case
the tablet should have happened with any accident, either by land or sea, a
person, without some previous knowledge of the subject, might not be able to
understand its contents."23
______________
20 Ibid. "It is now generally agreed that we may distinguish a
group of early dialogues commonly called 'Socratic' from a larger group in
which the doctrines characteristic of Orphism and Pythagoreanism for the first
time make their appearance"--From Religion to Philosophy, p. 242.
"Thus, the Megarian and Eleatic doctrines, though they had not satisfied
him, had impelled Plato to look for a point of union of the One and the Many;
but he was enabled to find it only by a more thorough acquaintance with the
Pythagoreans. It is only after his return from
21 "Constantly perfecting himself in perfect Mysteries, a man in them
alone becomes truly perfect, says he in the Phaedrus."--Isaac
22 This passage, from Cory's Ancient Fragments, is in a translation
somewhat different from that of Jowett and other editors, though Jowett (Plato's
Works, Vol. I, Phaedrus, p. 450) gives the following: ". . .
and he who has part in this gift, and is truly possessed and duly out of his
mind, is by the use of purifications and mysteries made whole and exempt from
evil. . . ." The term "pure light" appears to be a reference to
the Astral Light, or Akasha, of the Theosophists. For this term, Astral Light,
Madame Blavatsky gives in the Theosophical Glossary the following
definition: "A subtle essence visible only to the clairvoyant eye, and the
lowest but one (viz., the earth) of the Seven Akashic or Kosmic
principles." She further says that it corresponds to the astral body in
man.
23
11
Aristotle left the esoteric tradition, and went in the direction of naturalism
and empiricism. Yet in him too there are many points of distinctly esoteric
ideology. His distinction between the vegetative animal soul and the rational
soul, the latter alone surviving while the former perished; his dualism of
heavenly and terrestrial life; his belief that the heavenly bodies were great
living beings among the hierarchies; and his theory that development is the
passing of potentiality over into actualization, are all items of Theosophic
belief.
Greek philosophy is said to have ended with Neo-Platonism--which is one of
history's greatest waves of the esoteric tendency. It would be a long task to
detail the theosophic ideas of the great Plotinus. He, Origen and Herrennius
were pupils of Ammonius Saccas, whose teachings they promised never to reveal,
as being occult. Plotinus' own teachings were given only to initiated circles
of students.24 Proclus25 gives astonishing corroboration to a fragment of
Theosophic doctrine in any excerpt quoted in Isis Unveiled:
"After death, the soul (the spirit) continueth to linger in the aerial
(astral) form till it is entirely purified from all angry and voluptuous
passions . . . then doth it put off by a second dying the aerial body as it did
the earthly one. Whereupon the ancients say that there is a celestial body
always joined with the soul, and which is immortal, luminous and
star-like."26
The esotericist feels that the evidence, a meagre portion of which has been
thus cursorily submitted, is highly indica-
______________
24 Porphyry: Life of Plotinus, in the Introduction to Vol. I, of the Works
of Plotinus, edited by Dr. Kenneth S. Guthrie.
25 "Proclus maintained that the philosophical doctrines (chiefly
Platonism) are of the same content as the mystic revelations, that philosophy
in fact borrowed from the Mysteries, from Orphism, through Pythagoras, from
whom Plato borrowed."--Samuel Angus: The Mystery Religions and
Christianity (London, J. Murray, 1925), p. 267.
26 Quoted by Madame Blavatsky in
12
tive that beneath the surface of ancient pagan civilization there were
undercurrents of sacred wisdom, esoteric traditions of high knowledge,
descended from revered sources, and really cherished in secret.
Presumably the Christian religion itself drew many of its basic concepts
directly or indirectly from esoteric sources. It was born amid the various
cults and faiths that then occupied the field of the Alexandrian East and the
Christianity grew up in the milieu of the Mysteries,27 and those early Fathers
who formulated the body of Christian doctrine did not step drastically outside
the traditions of the prevalent faiths. Their work was rather an incorporation
of some new elements into the accepted systems of the time. In some cases, as
in
______________
27 "For over a thousand years the ancient Mediterranean world was familiar
with a type of religion known as Mystery-Religions, which changed the religious
outlook of the Western world and which are operative in European philosophy and
in the Christian Church to this day. Dean Inge, in his Christian Mysticism,
p. 354, says that Catholicism owes to the Mysteries . . . the notions of
secrecy, of symbolism, of mystical brotherhood, of sacramental grace, and above
all, of the three stages of the spiritual life; ascetic purification,
illumination and epopteia as the crown."--Samuel Angus: The
Mystery Religions and Christianity: Foreword.
13
blended, for many Christians in the Egyptian city were at the same time
connected with the Mystery cult of Serapis, as many in
When in the third and fourth centuries the Church Fathers began the task of
shaping a body of doctrine for the new movement, the same theosophic tendencies
pressed upon them from every side. Clement and Origen brought many phases of
theosophic doctrine to prominence, a fact which tended later to exclude their
writings from the canon. And when Augustine drew up the dogmatic schematism of
the new religion, he was tremendously swayed by the work of the Neo-Platonist
Plotinus, who, along with Ammonius Saccas, Numenius, Porphyry, and Proclus, had
been a member of one or several of the Mystery bodies.31
The presence of powerful currents of Neo-Platonic idealism in the early church
is attested by the effects upon it of Manichaeism, Gnosticism and the Antioch
heresy, which tendencies had to be exterminated before Christianity definitely
took its course of orthodox development. Occult
______________
28 See argument in Dr. Annie Besant's Esoteric Christianity (
29 See Samuel Angus: The Mystery Religions and Christianity; and H. A.
A. Kennedy:
30 As in 2 Corinthians, XII, 1-5.
31 "Plotinus, read in a Latin translation, was the schoolmaster who
brought Augustine to Christ. There is therefore nothing startling in the considered
opinion of Rudolph Eucken that Plotinus has influenced Christian theology more
than any other thinker."--Dean R. W. Inge: The Philosophy of Plotinus
(New York, London, 1918), Vol. I.
14
writers32 have indicated the forces at work in the formative period of the
church's dogma which eradicated the theory of reincarnation and other aspects
of esoteric knowledge from the orthodox canons. The point remains true,
nevertheless, that Christianity took its rise in an atmosphere saturated with
ideas resembling those of Theosophy.
Theosophy, the Gnosis, having been to a large extant rejected from Catholic
theology, nevertheless did not disappear from history. It possessed an
unquenchable vitality and made its way through more or less submerged channels
down the centuries. Movements, sects, and individuals that embodied its
cherished principles could be enumerated at great length. A list would include
Paulicians, the Bogomiles, the Bulgars, the Paterenes, the Comacines, the
Cathari; Albigensians, and pietists; Joachim of Floris, Roger Bacon, Robert
Bradwardine, Raymond Lully; the Alchemists, the Fire Philosophers; Paracelsus,
B. Figulus; the Friends of God, led by Nicholas of Basle; L'Homme de Cuir, in
Switzerland in the Engadine; the early Waldenses; the Bohemian tradition given
in the Tarot; the great Aldus' Academy at Venice; the Rosicrucians and the
Florentine Academy founded by Pletho. Some theosophists have attempted to find
esoteric meanings in the literature of the Troubadours, and in such writings as
The Romance of the Rose, the Holy Grail legends and the Arthurian Cycle,
if read in an esoteric sense; Gower's Confessio Amantis, Spencer's Faërie
Queen, the works of Dietrich of Berne, Wayland Smith, the Peredur Stories,
and the Mabinogian compilations. German pietism expressed fundamentally
Theosophic ideas through Eckhardt, Tauler, Suso, and Jacob Boehme. The names of
such figures as Count Rakowczi, Cagliostro, Count St. Germain, and Francis
Bacon have been linked with the secret orders. In fact there was hardly a
period when the ghosts of occult wisdom did not hover in the background of
European thought.
Sometimes its predominant manifestation was mystically
______________
32 C. W. Leadbeater: The Christian Creed (
15
religious; again it was cosmological and philosophical; never did it quite lose
its attachment to the conceptions of science, which was at times reduced nearly
to magic. And it is upon the implications of this scientific interest that the
occult theorist bases his claim that science, along with religion and
philosophy, has sprung in the beginning from esoteric knowledge. Not
overlooking the oldest scientific lore to be found in the sacred books of the
East, our attention is called to the astronomical science of the
"Chaldeans"; the similar knowledge among the Egyptians, such, for
instance, as led them to construct the Pyramids on lines conformable to
sidereal measurements and movements; the reputed knowledge of the precession of
the equinoxes among the Persian Magi and the "Chaldeans"; the later
work of the scientists among the Alexandrian savants, which had so important a
bearing upon the direction of the nascent science in the minds of Copernicus,
Galileo, Kepler, and Newton; the known achievements of Roger Bacon, Robert
Grosseteste, Agrippa von Nettesheim, and Jerome Cardano in incipient
empiricism. It has always been assumed that the strange mixture of true science
and grotesque magic found, for instance, in the work of Roger Bacon, justifies
the implication that the concern with magic operated as a hindrance to the
development of science. It should not be forgotten that the stimulus to
scientific discovery sprang from the presuppositions embodied in magical
theory. It is now beyond dispute that the magnificent achievements of
Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo were actuated by their brooding over the
significance of the Pythagorean theories of number and harmony. Both science
and magic aim, each in its special modus, at the control of nature. Through the
gateway of electricity, says theosophy, science has been admitted, part way at
least, into the inner sanctum of nature's dynamic heart. Magic has sought an
entry to the same citadel by another road.
The Theosophist, then, believes, on the strength of evidence only a fragment of
which has been touched upon here, that esotericism has been weaving its web of
influence, powerful even if subtle and unseen, throughout the religions,
16
philosophies, and sciences of the world. It makes little difference what names
have been attached from time to time to this esoteric tradition; and certainly
no attempt is made here to prove an underlying unity or continuity in all this
"wisdom literature." Suffice it to point out that in all ages there
have been movements analogous to modern Theosophy, and that the modern cult
regards itself as merely a regular revelation in the periodic resurgence of an
ancient learning.
17
CHAPTER II
THE AMERICAN BACKGROUND
An outline of the circumstances which may be said to constitute the background
for the American development of Theosophy should begin with the mass of strange
phenomena which took place, and were widely reported, in connection with the
religious revivals from 1740 through the Civil War period. A veritable epidemic
of what were known as the "barks" and the "jerks" swept
over the land. They were most frequent in evangelical meetings, but also became
common outside. The
During this period, too, several mathematical prodigies were publicly exhibited
in the performance of quite unaccountable calculations, giving instantaneously
the correct results of complicated manipulations of numbers.1 From about 1820,
rumors were beginning to be heard of exceptional psychic powers possessed by
the Hindus.
But a more notable stir was occasioned a little later when the country began to
be flooded with reports of exhibitions of mesmerism and hypnotism. Couéism had
not yet come, but the work of Mesmer, Janet, Charcot, Bernheim, and others in
______________
1 Paul Morphy, a chess "wizard" of startling capabilities, excited
wonder at the time, like the eight-year-old Polish lad of more recent times.
18
spread tradition; but when such people as Quimby and others added to the cult
of healing the practice of mesmerism, and subjoined both to a set of
metaphysical or spiritual formulae, the imaginative susceptibilities of the
people were vigorously stimulated, and the ferment resulted in cults of
"mind healing." Quimby was active with his public demonstrations
throughout
The cult of Swedenborgianism, coming in chiefly from
19
Theosophic in character, it all served to bring much grist to the later
Theosophical mill.
A certain identity of aims and characters between Theosophy and
Swedenborgianism is revealed in the fact that "in December, 1783, a little
company of sympathizers, with similar aims, met in London and founded the
'Theosophical Society,' among the members of which were John Flaxman, the
sculptor, William Sharpe, the engraver, and F. H. Barthelemon, the
composer."2 It was dissolved about 1788 when the Swedenborgian churches
began to function. Many such religious organizations could well be called
theosophical associations, as was the one founded by Brand in Cincinnati, Ohio,
in 1825.
Another organization which dealt hardly less with heavenly revelations, and
which must also be regarded as conducive to theosophical attitudes, was the
"Children of the Light," the Friends, or Quakers. With a history
antedating the nineteenth century by more than a hundred and fifty years, these
people held a significant place in the religious life of America during the
period we are delineating. Their intense emphasis upon the direct and
spontaneous irradiation of the spirit of God into the human consciousness
strikes a deep note of genuine mysticism. In fact, like Methodism, Quakerism
was born in the midst of a series of spiritualistic occurrences. George Fox
heard the heavenly voices and received inspirational messages directly from
spiritual visitants. The report of his supernatural experiences, and of the
miracles of healing which he was enabled to perform through spirit-given
powers, caused hundreds of people to flock to his banner and gave the movement
its primary impetus. His gospel was essentially one of spirit manifestation,
and his whole ethical system grew out of his conception of the régime of
personal life, conduct and mentality which was best designed to induce the
visitations of spirit influence. The spiritistic and mystical experiences of
the celebrated Madame Guyon, of France, enhanced the force of Fox's testimony.
______________
2 Encyclopedia Britannica: Article, "Swedenborgianism."
20
Not less inclined than the Friends to transcendental experiences were the
Shakers, who had settled in eighteen communistic associations or colonies in
the United States. They claimed to enjoy the power of apostolic healing,
prophecy, glossolalia, and the singing of inspired songs. They were led by the
spirit into deep and holy experiences, and claimed to be inspired by high
spiritual intelligences with whom they were in hourly communion. One of their
number, F. W. Evans, wrote to Robert Dale Owen, the Spiritualist, that the
Shakers had predicted the advent of Spiritualism seven years previously, and
that the Shaker order was the great medium between this world and the world of
spirits. He asserted that "Spiritualism originated among the Shakers of
America; that there were hundreds of mediums in the eighteen Shaker
communities, and that, in fact, nearly all the Shakers were mediums.
Mediumistic manifestations are as common among us as gold in California."3
He maintained that there were three degrees of spiritual manifestation, the third
of which is the "ministration of millennial truths to various nations,
tribes, kindred and people in the spirit world who were hungering and thirsting
after righteousness."4 He further pronounced a panegyric upon
Spiritualism, which is evidence that the Shakers were in sympathy with any
phenomena which seemed to indicate a connection with the celestial planes:
"Spiritualism has banished scepticism and infidelity from the minds of
thousands, comforted the mourner with angelic consolations, lifted up the
unfortunate, the outcast, the inebriate, taking away the sting of death, which
has kept mankind under perpetual bondage through fear--so that death is now, to
its millions of believers,
The kind and gentle servant who unlocks,
With noiseless hand, life's flower-encircled door,
To show us those we loved."5
Still another movement which had its origin in alleged supernaturalistic
manifestations and helped to intensify a
______________
3 William Howitt: History of the Supernatural (J. B. Lippincott &
Co., Philadelphia, 1863), Vol. II, p. 213.
4 Ibid. 5 Ibid., p. 214.
21
general belief in them, was the Church of the Latter Day Saints, or Mormons. In
1820, and again in 1823, Joseph Smith had a vision of an angel, who revealed to
him the repository of certain records inscribed on plates of gold, containing
the history of the aboriginal peoples of America. The ability to employ the
mystic powers of Urim and Thummim, which are embodied in these records,
constituted the special attribute of the seers of antiquity. The inscriptions
on the gold plates were represented as the key to the understanding of ancient
scriptures, and were said to be in a script known as Reformed Egyptian. The Book
of Mormon claims to be an English translation of these plates of gold.
It is not necessary here to follow the history of Smith and his church, but it
is interesting to point out the features of the case that touch either
Spiritualism or Theosophy. We have already noted the origin of Smith's
motivating idea in a direct message from the spirit world. We have also a
curious resemblance to Theosophy in the fact that an alleged ancient document
was brought to light as a book of authority, and that the material therein was
asserted to furnish a key to the interpretation of the archaic scriptures of
the world. Of the twelve articles of the Mormon creed, seven sections show a
spirit not incongruous with the tendency of Theosophic sentiment. Article One
professes belief in the Trinity; article Two asserts that men will be punished
for their own sins, not for Adam's; Three refers to the salvation of all
without exception; Seven sets forth belief in the gift of tongues, prophecy,
revelations, visions, healing, etc.; Eight questions the Bible's accurate
translation; Nine expresses the assurance that God will yet reveal many great
and important things pertaining to his kingdom; and Eleven proclaims freedom of
worship and the principle of toleration.
Orson Pratt, one of the leading publicists of the Mormon cult, said that where
there is an end of manifestation of new phenomena, such as visions, revelations
and inspiration, the people are lost in blindness. When prophecies fail,
darkness hangs over the people. In a tract issued by Pratt it is stated
22
that the Book of Mormon has been abundantly confirmed by miracles.
"Nearly every branch of the church has been blessed by miraculous signs
and gifts of the Holy Ghost, by which they have been confirmed, and by which we
know of a surety that this is the Church of Christ. They know that the blind
see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the dumb speak, that lepers are cleansed,
that bones are set, that the cholera is rebuked, and that the most virulent
diseases give way through faith in the name of Christ and the power of His
gospel."6
About 1825, in a meeting at the home of Josiah Quincy in Boston, a
philosophic-religious movement was launched which may seem to have had but
meagre influence on the advent of Theosophy later in the century, but which in
its motive and animating spirit was probably one of the cult's most immediate
precursors. The Unitarian faith, courageously agitated from 1812 to 1814 by
William E. Channing, Edward Everett, and Francis Parkman, flowered into a
religious denomination in 1825 and thenceforth exercised, in a measure out of
all proportion to its numerical strength, a powerful influence on American
religious thought. Under Emerson and Parker a little later the principle of
free expression of opinion was carried to such length that the formulation of
an orthodox creed was next to impossible.
They questioned not only the Trinitarian doctrine, as pagan rather than
Christian (the identical position taken by Madame Blavatsky in the volumes of Isis
Unveiled), but the whole orthodox structure. The Bible was not to be
regarded as God's infallible and inspired word, but a work of exalted human
agencies. Christ was no heaven-born savior, but a worthy son of man. If he was
man and anything more, his life is worthless to mere men. His life was a man's
life, his gospel a man's gospel--otherwise inapplicable to us. Salvation is
within every person. Death does not determine the state of the soul for all
eternity; the soul passes on into spirit with all its earth-won character. In
the life that is to be, as well as in the life that now is, the soul must reap
what
______________
6 Ibid.
23
it sows. If there were a Unitarian creed, it might be summarized as follows:
The fatherhood of God; the brotherhood of man; the leadership of Jesus;
salvation by character; the progress of mankind onward and upward forever. All
this, as far it goes, is strikingly harmonious with the Theosophic position.
That there was an evident community of interests between the two movements is
indicated by the fact that Unitarianism, like Theosophy, sought Hindu
connections, and strangely enough made a sympathetic entente with the
Brahmo-Somaj Society, while Theosophy later affiliated with the Arya-Somaj.7
No examination of the American background of Theosophy can fail to take account
of that movement which carried the minds of New England thinkers to a lofty
pitch during the early half of the nineteenth century, Transcendentalism. It
has generally been attributed to the impact of German Romanticism, transmitted
by way of England through Carlyle, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. French influence
was really more direct and dominating, but the powerful effect of Oriental
religion and philosophy on Emerson, hitherto not considered seriously, should
not be overlooked. "All of Emerson's notes on Oriental scriptures have
been deleted from Bliss Perry's Heart of Emerson's Journals."8 No
student conversant with the characteristic marks of Indian philosophy needs
documentary corroboration of the fact that Emerson's thought was saturated with
typically Eastern conceptions. The evidence runs through nearly all his works
like a design in a woven cloth. "Scores upon scores of passages in his Journals
and Essays show that he leaned often on the Vedas for inspiration,
and paraphrased lines of the Puranas in his poems."9 But direct testimony
______________
7 As early as 1824 Unitarians in America took a lively interest in the Hindu
leader Rammohun Roy, who had "adopted Unitarianism," and also in the
work of the Rev. William Adam, a Baptist missionary, who had become converted
to Unitarianism in India. A British-Indian Unitarian Association was formed,
and the Rev. Chas. H. A. Dall was sent to Calcutta, where he effected the
alliance with the Brahmo-Somaj.
8 Article: Emerson's Debt to the Orient, by Arthur E. Christy, in The
Monist, January, 1928.
9 Ibid.
24
from Emerson himself is not wanting. His Journals prove that his reading
of the ancient Oriental classics was not sporadic, but more or less constant.10
He refers to some of them in the lists of each year's sources. In 1840 he tells
how in the heated days he read nothing but the "Bible of the tropics,
which I find I come back upon every three or four years. It is sublime as heat
and night and the breathless ocean. It contains every religious sentiment. . .
. It is no use to put away the book; if I trust myself in the woods or in a
boat upon the pond, Nature makes a Brahmin of me presently."11 This was at
the age of twenty-seven. In the Journal of 1845 he writes:
"The Indian teaching, through its cloud of legends, has yet a simple and
grand religion, like a queenly countenance seen through a rich veil. It teaches
to speak the truth, love others as yourself, and to despise trifles. The East
is grand--and makes Europe appear the land of trifles. Identity! Identity!
Friend and foe are of one stuff . . . Cheerful and noble is the genius of this
cosmogony."12
Lecturing before graduate classes at Harvard he later said: "Thought has
subsisted for the most part on one root; the Norse mythology, the Vedas,
Shakespeare have served the ages." In referring in one passage to the
Bible he says:
"I have used in the above remarks the Bible for the ethical revelation
considered generally, including, that is, the Vedas,
______________
10 The Journal shows that as early as 1822 he had looked into Zoroaster.
In 1823 he refers to two articles in Hindu mathematics and mythology in Vol. 29
of the Edinburgh Review. By 1832 he had dipped into Pythagoras. In 1836
he quotes Confucius, Empedocles, and Xenophanes. By 1838 he had read the Institutes
of Menu, and again quoted Zoroaster, Buddha, and Confucius. The first
reference to the Vedas is made in 1839. In 1841 he had seen the Vishnu
Sarna (a corrupt spelling of Vishnu Sharman), together with Hermes
Trismegistus and the Neo-Platonists, Iamblichus, and Proclus. The She-King and
the Chinese Classics are noted in 1843, and the first reference to the Bhagavad
Gita in 1845. In 1847 comes the Vishnu Purana, and in 1849 the Desatir,
a supposedly Persian work, and in 1855 the Rig Veda Sanhita.
11 This passage is found in Letters of Emerson to a Friend, edited
by Charles Eliot Norton.
12 Emerson's Journal for 1845, p. 130.
25
the sacred writings of every nation, and not of the Hebrews alone."13
Elsewhere he says:
"Yes, the Zoroastrian, the Indian, the Persian scriptures are majestic and
more to our daily purpose than this year's almanac or this day's newspaper. I
owed--my friend and I owed--a magnificent day to the Bhagavat-Gita. It was the
first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy,
but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in
another age and another climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same
questions which exercise us. . . . Let us cherish the venerable oracle."14
The first stanza of Emerson's poem "Brahma, Song of the Soul," runs
as follows:
"If the red slayer thinks he slays,
Or if the slain thinks he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass and turn again."
Could the strange ideas and hardly less strange language of this verse have
been drawn elsewhere than from the 19th verse of the Second Valli, of the Katha
Upanishad,15 which reads?:
"If the slayer thinks I slay; if the slain thinks I am slain, then both of
them do not know well. It (the soul) does not slay nor is it slain."
His poem "Hamatreya" comes next in importance as showing Hindu
influence. In another poem, "Celestial Love," the wheel of birth and
death is referred to:
"In a region where the wheel
On which all beings ride,
Visibly revolves."
Emerson argues for reincarnation in the Journal of 1845. "Traveling
the path of life through thousands of births."
______________
13 Emerson's Journals, Vol. V, p. 334.
14 Emerson's Journals, Vol. VII, p. 241.
15 Biblioteca Indica, Vol. XV, translated by E. Roer, Calcutta, 1853.
26
"By the long rotation of fidelity they meet again in worthy forms."
Emerson's "oversoul" is synonymous with a Sanskrit term. He regarded
matter as the negative manifestation of the Universal Spirit. Mind was the
expression of the same Spirit in its positive power. Man, himself, is nothing
but the universal spirit present in a material organism. Soul is "part and
parcel of God." He says that "the soul in man is not an organ, but
animates and exercises all organs; from within and from behind a light shines
through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, that the light
is all."16 This is Vedanta philosophy. In the Journal of 1866 he
wrote:
"In the history of intellect, there is no more important fact than the
Hindu theology, teaching that the beatitude or supreme good is to be attained
through science: namely, by the perception of the real from the unreal, setting
aside matter, and qualities or affections or emotions, and persons and actions,
as mayas or illusions, and thus arriving at the conception of the One eternal
Life and Cause, and a perpetual approach and assimilation to Him, thus escaping
new births and transmigrations. . . . Truth is the principle and the moral of
Hindu theology, Truth as against the Maya which deceives Gods and men; Truth,
the principle, and Retirement and Self-denial the means of attaining
it."17
Mr. Christy18 states that Emerson's concept of evolution must be thought of in
terms of emanation; and a detailed examination of his concept of compensation
reduces it to the doctrine of Karma.
The Journals are full of quotable passages upon one or another phase of
Hinduism. And there are his other poems "Illusions" and
"Maya," whose names bespeak Oriental presentations. But Mr. Christy
thinks the following excerpt is Emerson's supreme tribute to Orientalism:
"There is no remedy for musty, self-conceited English life made up of
fictitious hating ideas--like Orientalism. That astonishes and disconcerts
English decorum. For once there is thunder he
______________
16 Emerson's Works (Centenary Edition), Vol. II, p. 270.
17 Emerson's Journals, Vol. X, p. 162.
18 Article: "Emerson's Debt to the Orient," Arthur E. Christy, The
Monist, January, 1928.
27
never heard, light he never saw, and power which trifles with time and
space."19
It may seem ludicrous to suggest that Emerson was the chief forerunner of
Madame Blavatsky, her John the Baptist. Yet seriously, without Emerson, Madame
Blavatsky could hardly have launched her gospel when she did with equal hope of
success. There is every justification for the assertion that Emerson's
Orientalistic contribution to the general Transcendental trend of thought was
preparatory to Theosophy. It must not be forgotten that his advocacy of
Brahmanic ideas and doctrines came at a time when the expression of a laudatory
opinion of the Asiatic religions called forth an opprobrium from evangelistic
quarters hardly less than vicious in its bitterness. Theosophy could not hope
to make headway until the virulent edge of that orthodox prejudice had been
considerably blunted. It was Emerson's magnanimous eclecticism which
administered the first and severest rebuke to that prejudice, and inaugurated
that gradual mollification of sentiment toward the Orientals which made
possible the welcome which Hindu Yogis and Swamis received toward the end of
the century.
The exposition of Emerson's orientalism makes it unnecessary to trace the
evidences of a similar influence running through the philosophical thinking of
Thoreau and Walt
_______
19 In 1854 a most significant fact was recorded in New England history. A young
Englishman, Thomas Cholmondeley, friend of Arthur Hugh Clough, and nephew of
Bishop Heber, came to Concord with letters of introduction to Emerson. The
latter sent him to board at Mrs. John Thoreau's. A short time after
Cholmondeley's return to England, Henry Thoreau received forty-four volumes of
Hindu literature as a gift from the young nobleman. Of these, twenty-three were
bequeathed to Emerson at Thoreau's death. The list contained the names of such
eminent translators as H. H. Milman, H. H. Wilson, M. E. Burnouff and Sir
William Jones. The books were the texts from the Vedas, the Vishnu
Purana, the Mahabarhata, with the Bhagavad Gita. Tradition has it
that Emerson died with a copy of the Bhagavad Gita (said to have been
one of three copies in the country at the time) in his faltering grasp. It is
known that he read, besides, numerous volumes of Persian poetry, translations
of Confucius and other Chinese philosophers, by James Ligge, Marshman and David
Collier, and books on Hindu mathematics and mythology. The poem
"Brahma" first appeared in the Journal of July, 1856, and in
the Atlantic Monthly, for November, 1867. He did not receive Thoreau's
bequest until 1852, but it requires no stretch of imagination to presume that
the two friends had access to each other's libraries in the interval between
1854 and 1862.
28
Whitman. The robust cosmopolitanism of these two intellects lifted them out of
the provincialisms of the current denominations into the realm of universal
sympathies. We know that Thoreau became the recipient of forty-four volumes of
the Hindu texts in 1854; but it is evident that he, like Emerson, had had
contact with Brahmanical literature previous to that. His works are replete
with references to Eastern ideas and beliefs. He could hardly have associated
so closely with Emerson as he did and escaped the contagion of the latter's
Oriental enthusiasm.
Mr. Horace L. Traubel, one of the three literary executors of Whitman, had in
his possession the poet's own copy of the Bhagavad Gita. Perry and
Binns, in their biographies of Whitman, give lists of the literature with which
he was familiar; and many ancient authors are mentioned. Among them are
Confucius, the Hindu poets, Persian poets, Zoroaster; portions of the Vedas and
Puranas, Alger's Oriental Poetry and other Eastern sources. Dr. Richard M.
Bucke, another of the three literary executors, and a close friend and
associate of "the good gray poet," was one of the prominent early
Theosophists, and it is reasonable to presume that Whitman was familiar with
Theosophic theory through the channel of this friendship. Whitman likewise gave
form and body to another volume of sentiment which has contributed, no one can
say how much, to the adoption of Theosophy. This was America's own native
mysticism. It created an atmosphere in which the traditions of the supernatural
grew robust and realistic.
Attention must now be directed to that wide-spread movement in America which
has come to be known as New Thought. It came, as has been hinted at, out of the
spiritualization, or one might say, doctrinization, of mesmerism. Observation
of the surprising effects of hypnotic control, indicating the presence of a
psychic energy in man susceptible to external or self-generated suggestion, led
to the inference that a linking of spiritual affirmation with the unconscious
dynamism would conduce to invariably beneficent results, that might be made
permanent for character. If a
29
jocular suggestion by the stage mesmerist could lead the subject into a
ludicrous performance; if a suggestion of illness, of pain, of a headache,
could produce the veritable symptoms; why could not a suggestion of adequate
strength and authority lead to the actualization of health, of personality, of
well-being, of spirituality? The task was merely to transform animal magnetism
into spiritual suggestion. The aim was to indoctrinate the subconscious mind
with a fixation of spiritual sufficiency and opulence, until the personality
came to embody and manifest on the physical plane of life the character of the
inner motivation. Seeing what an obsession of a fixed abnormal idea had done to
the body and mind in many cases, New Thought tried to regenerate the life in a
positive and salutary direction by the conscious implantation of a higher
spiritual concept, until it, too, became obsessive, and wrought an effect on
the outer life coördinate with its own nature. The process of hypnotic
suggestion became a moral technique, with a potent religious formula, according
to which spiritual truth functioned in place of personal magnetic force.
Essentially it reduced itself to the business of self-hypnotization by a lofty
conception. Thought itself was seen to possess mesmeric power. "As a man
thinketh in his heart" became the slogan of New Thought, and the kindred
Biblical adjuration--"Be ye transformed by the renewing of your
mind"--furnished the needed incentive to positive mental aggression. The
world of today is familiar with the line of phrases which convey the basic
ideology of the New Thought cults. One hears much of being in tune with the
Infinite, of making the at-one-ment with the powers of life, of getting into
harmony with the universe, of making contact with the reservoir of Eternal
Supply, of getting en rapport with the Cosmic Consciousness, of keeping
ourselves puny and stunted because we do not ask more determinedly from the
Boundless.
Here is unmistakable evidence of a somewhat diluted Hinduism. Under the pioneering
of P. P. Quimby, Horatio W. Dresser, and others, study clubs were formed and
lecture courses given. Charles Brodie Patterson, W. J. Colville,
30
James Lane Allen, C. D. Larson, Orison S. Marden, and a host of others, aided
in the popularization of these ideas, until in the past few decades there has
been witnessed an almost endless brood of ramifications from the parent
conception, with associations of Spiritual Science, Divine Science, Cosmic
Truth, Universal Light and Harmony carrying the message. So we have been called
upon to witness the odd spectacle of what was essentially Hindu Yoga philosophy
masquerading in the guise of commanding personality and forceful salesmanship!
But grotesque as these developments have been, there is no doubting their importance
in the Theosophical background. They have served to introduce the thought of
the Orient to thousands, and have become stepping-stones to its deeper
investigation.
A concomitant episode in the expansion of New Thought and Transcendentalism was
the direct program of Hindu propaganda fathered by Hindu spokesmen themselves.
When it became profitable, numerous Yogis, Swamis, "Adepts," and
"Mahatmas" came to this country and lectured on the doctrines and
principles of Orientalism to audiences of élite people with mystical
susceptibilities. Some time in the seventies, Boston was galvanized into a
veritable quiver of interest in Eastern doctrines by the eloquent P. C.
Mazoomdar, author of The Oriental Christ, whose campaign left its deep
impress. His work, in fact, formed one of the links between Unitarianism and
Brahmanic thought, already noted. In 1893 Swami Vivekananda, chosen as a
delegate to the World Congress of Religions at the Columbian Exposition at
Chicago, and author of Yoga Philosophy, began preaching the Yoga
principles of thought and discipline, and instituted in New York the Vedanta
Society. Almost every year since his coming has brought public lectures and
private instruction courses by native Hindus in the large American cities.
Concomitant with the evolution of New Thought came the sensational
dissemination of Mrs. Eddy's Christian Science. Offspring of P. P. Quimby's
mesmeric science, and erected by Mrs. Eddy's strange enthusiasm into a healing
31
cult based on a reinterpretation of Christian doctrines--the allness of Spirit
and the nothingness of matter-the organization has enjoyed a steady and
pronounced growth and drawn into its pale thousands of Christian communicants
who felt the need of a more dynamic or more fruitful gospel. The conception of
the impotence of matter, as non-being, is as old as Greek and Hindu philosophy.
Mrs. Eddy's contribution in the matter was her use of the philosophical idea as
a psychological mantram for healing, and her adroitness in lining up the
Christian scriptures to support the idea.
It would require a fairly discerning insight to mark out clearly the
inter-connection of Christian Science and Theosophy. There is basically little
similarity between the two schools, or little common ground on which they might
meet. On the contrary there is much direct antagonism in their views and dogma.
Nevertheless the Boston cult tended indirectly to bring some of its votaries
along the path toward occultism. In the first place, like Unitarianism, it had
induced thousands of sincere seekers for a new and liberal faith to sever the
ties of their former servile attachment to an uninspiring orthodoxy. Secondly,
Christian Science does yeoman service in "demonstrating" the
spiritual viewpoint. Its emphasis on spirit, as opposed to material concepts of
reality, is entirely favorable to the general theses of Theosophy. Thirdly, the
intellectual limitations of the system develop the need of a larger philosophy,
which Theosophy stands ready to supply. Christian Science, being primarily a
Christian healing cult, with a body of ideas adequate to that function, often
leads the intelligent and open-minded student in its ranks to become aware that
it falls far short of offering a comprehensive philosophy of life. It has
little or nothing to say about man's origin, his present rank in a universal
order, or his destiny. It leaves the pivotal question of immortality in the
same status as does conventional Christianity. Many Christian Science adherents
have seen that Theosophy offers a fuller and more adequate cosmograph, and
accordingly adopted it. Their experience in the Eddy
32
system brought them to the outer court of the Occult Temple.20
Among major movements that paved the way for Theosophy, the one perhaps most
directly conducive to it is Spiritualism, for the founder of the Theosophical
Society began her career in the Spiritualistic ranks. On account of this close
relationship it is necessary to outline the origin and spread of this strange
movement more fully.
The weird behavior of two country girls, the one twelve and the other nine, in
the hamlet of Hydesville, near Rochester, New York, in the spring of 1847, was
like a spark to power for the release of religious fancy; for Margaret and Kate
Fox were supposed to have picked up again the thread of communication between
the world of human consciousness and the world of disembodied spirits, and thus
to have given fresh reinforcement to man's assurance of immortality. From this
bizarre beginning the movement spread rapidly to all parts of America, England,
and France. In nearly every town in America groups were soon meeting, eager for
manifestations and fervently invoking the denizens of the unseen worlds.
Various methods and means were provided whereby the disembodied entities could
communicate with dull mundane faculties. Many and varied were the types of
response. Besides the simple "raps," there were tinklings of tiny
aerial bells, flashings of light, tipping of tables, levitation of furniture
and of human bodies, messages through the planchette, free voice messages,
trumpet speaking, alphabet rapping, materialization of the hands and of
complete forms, trance catalepsis and inspiration, automatic writing, slate
writing, glossolalia, and many other variety of phenomena. Mediums, clairvoyants,
inspirational
______________
20 This difference between the two cults may perhaps be best depicted by
quoting the words used in the author's presence by a woman of intelligence who
had founded two Christian Science churches and had been notably successful as a
healing practitioner, but who later united with the Theosophical Society. She
said: "Christian Science had rather well satisfied my spiritual needs, but
had totally starved my intellect." Her experience is doubtless typical of
that of many others, in whom, after the first burst of sensational interest in
healing has receded, the yearning for a satisfactory philosophy of life and the
cosmos surged uppermost again.
33
speakers sprang forward plentifully; and each one became the focus of a group
activity. It is somewhat difficult for us to reconstruct the picture of this
flare of interest and activity, the scope of this absorbing passion for spirit
manifestation. It attests the eagerness of the human heart for tangible
evidence of survival. With periodical ebb and flow it has persisted to the
present day, when its vogue is hardly less general than at any former time. In
the fifties and sixties the Spiritualistic agitation was in full flush, with
many extraordinary occurrences accredited to its exponents.21
Spiritualism encountered opposition among the clergy and the materialistic
scientists, yet it has hardly ever been wanting in adherents among the members
of both groups. An acquaintance with its supporters would reveal a surprising
list of high civil and government officials, attorneys, clergymen, physicians,
professors, and scientists.22
One of the first Spiritualistic writers of this country was Robert Dale Owen,
whose Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World and The Debatable
Land were notable contributions. Two of the most eminent representatives of
the
______________
21 It has been conservatively estimated that in 1852 there were three hundred
mediumistic circles in Philadelphia. The number of mediums in the United States
in 1853 was thirty thousand. In 1855 there were two and a half million
Spiritualists in the land, with an increase of three hundred each year. The
rate of increase far outran those of the Lutheran and Methodist denominations.
An interesting feature of this rapid spread of the movement was its political
significance and results. Not inherently concerned with politics, its devotees
mostly adopted strong anti-slavery tenets. Judge Edmonds, an eminent jurist,
converted to Spiritualism by his (at first skeptical) investigations of it,
asserted that the Spiritualist vote came near to carrying the election of 1856,
and actually did carry that of 1860 for the North against the Democratic party.
Another most interesting side-light is the fact that the sweep of
Spiritualistic excitement redeemed thousands of atheists to an acceptance of
religious verities. (For these and other interesting data see Howitt's History
of the Supernatural, Vol. II.)
22 Spiritualists say that Lincoln was eventually moved to emancipate the slaves
by his reception of a spirit message through Hattie Colburn, a medium who came
to see him about a furlough for her son. Horace Greeley was favorably impressed
by the evidence presented. And a later President, McKinley, maintained a deep
concern in the phenomena, along with his powerful political manager, Senator
Mark Hanna, who seldom undertook a move of any consequence without first
consulting a medium, Mrs. Gutekunst, to whom, for purposes of ready
availability, he had given a residence in his home. Senators and Cabinet
members were by no means immune.
34
movement in its earliest days were Prof. Robert Hare, an eminent scientist and
the inventor of the oxyhydrogen blow-pipe, and Judge Edmonds, a leading jurist.
Both these men had approached the subject at first in a skeptical spirit, with
the intention of disclosing its unsound premises; but they were fair enough to
study the evidence impartially, with the result that both were convinced of the
genuineness of the phenomena. Both avowed their convictions courageously in
public, and Judge Edmonds made extensive lecture tours of the country, the
propaganda effect of which was great.23 Before the actual launching of the
Theosophical Society in 1875 at least four prominent later Theosophists had
played more or less important rôles in the drama of Spiritualism. Madame
Blavatsky, as we shall see, had identified herself with its activities; Mr. J.
R. Newton was a vigorous worker; and it was Col. Olcott himself who brought the
manifestations taking place in 1873 at the Eddy farmhouse near Chittenden,
Vermont, to public notice and who put forth one of the first large volumes
covering these and other phenomena in 1874, People From the Other World. The
fourth member was Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten, who had served as a medium with
the Bulwer-Lytton group of psychic investigators in England, and who added two
books to Spiritualistic literature--Art Magic and Nineteenth Century
Miracles. Col. Olcott, Madame Blavatsky, and Mrs. Britten made material
contributions to several Spiritualistic magazines, especially The Spiritual
Scientist, edited in Boston.
Meantime Spiritualistic investigation got under way and after the sixties a
stream of reports, case histories, accounts of phenomena, and books from
prominent advocates flooded the country. The Seybert Commission on
Spiritualism, composed of leading officers and professors at the University of
Pennsylvania, submitted its report in 1888. In the same
______________
23 Others prominent in the movement at the time were Governor N. P. Tallmadge,
of Wisconsin, Rev. Adin Ballou, J. P. Davis and Benjamin Coleman; and Profs.
Bush, Mapes, Gray, and Channing from leading universities. Mr. Epes Sargeant,
of Boston, added prestige to the cult. A Dr. Gardner, of Boston, and the
Unitarian Theodore Parker gave testimony as to the beneficent influence exerted
by the Spiritualistic faith.
35
year R. B. Davenport undertook to turn the world away from what he considered a
delusion with his book Deathblow to Spiritualism: The True Story of the Fox
Sisters; but he found that Spiritualism had a strange vitality that enabled
it to survive many a "deathblow." As a result of studies in psychic
phenomena in England came F. W. H. Myers' impressive work, The Human
Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, in which the foundations for
the theory of the subliminal or subconscious mind were laid.
But the work of the mediums themselves kept public feeling most keenly alert. A
list of some of the most prominent ones includes Mrs. Hayden, Henry Slade,
Pierre L. O. A. Keeler, the slate-writer, Robert Houdin (who bequeathed his
name and exploits to the later Houdini), Ira and William Davenport, Anna Eva
Fay, Charles Slade, Eusapia Paladino, Mrs. Leonara Piper. Robert Dale Owen,
already mentioned as author, was a medium of no mean ability. In the same
category was J. M. Peebles, of California, whose books, Seers of the Ages
and Who Are These Spiritualists? and whose public lecture tours, rendered
him one of the most prominent of all the advocates of the cult. A career of inspirational
public speaking was staged by Cora V. Richmond, who gave lectures on erudite
themes with an uncommon flow of eloquence. W. J. Colville began where she
ended, giving unprepared addresses on topics suggested by the audience.
The three most famous American mediums deserve somewhat more extended
treatment. The first of the trio is Daniel Dunglas Home, who was a poor
Scottish boy adopted in America. While a child, spiritual power manifested
itself to him to his terror and annoyance. Raps came around him on the table or
desk, on the chairs or walls. The furniture moved about and was attracted
toward him. His aunt, with whom he lived was in consternation at these
phenomena, and, deeming him possessed, sent for three clergymen to exorcise the
spirit; when they did not succeed, she threw his Sunday suit and linen out the
window and pushed him out-of-doors. He was thus cast on the world without
friends, but the power that he possessed raised him friends and sent
36
him forth from America to be the planter of Spiritualism all over Europe.24
The second of the triumvirate was Andrew Jackson Davis. His function seemed to
be that of the seer and the scribe, rather than of the producer of material
operations. He was born of poor parents, in 1826, in Orange Country, New York.
He seems to have inherited a clairvoyant faculty. He received only five months'
schooling in the village, it being "found impossible to teach him anything
there."25 During his solitary hours in the fields he saw visions and heard
voices. Removing to Poughkeepsie, he became the clairvoyant of a mesmeric
lecturer, and in this capacity began to excite wonder by his revelations. This
was before the Rochester knockings were heard. He diagnosed and healed
diseases, and prescribed for scores who came to him, surprising both patients
and physicians by his competence. Then he began to see "into the heart of
things," to descry the essential nature of the world and the spiritual
constitution of the universe. He could see the interior of bodies and the metals
hidden in the earth. Adding his testimony to that of Fox and Swedenborg, he
asserted that every animal represented some human quality, some vice or virtue.
He gave Greek and Latin names of things, without having a knowledge of these
languages. In a vision he beheld The Magic Staff on which he was urged
to learn during life; on it was written his life's motto: "Under all
circumstances keep an open mind." In 1845 he delivered one hundred and
fifty-seven lectures in New York which announced a new philosophy of the
universe. They were published under the title, Nature's Divine Revelation,
a book of eight hundred pages. Davis then became a voluminous writer.26
______________
24 By strange and fortuitous circumstances he became the guest of the Emperor
of the French, of the King of Holland, of the Czar of Russia, and of many
lesser princes. His demonstrations before these grandees were extensions of the
phenomena occurring in his youth. See Howitt's History of the Supernatural,
Vol. II, pp. 222 ff.
25 Howitt's History of the Supernatural, Vol. II, p. 225.
26 He published his The Great Harmonia (Boston 1850); The Philosophy
of Spiritual Intercourse (New York, 1851); The Penetralia (Boston,
1856); The Present Age and
37
Thomas L. Harris, the third great representative, was much attracted by Davis' The
Divine Revelations of Nature, but developed spiritistic powers along a
somewhat different line, that of poetic inspiration. In his early exhibitions
of this supernormal faculty he dictated who epics, containing occasionally
excellent verse, under the alleged influence of Byron, Shelley, Keats and
others. The interesting manner in which these poems--a whole volume of three or
four hundred pages at a time--were created, is more amazing than their poetic
merit. Mr. Brittan, an English publisher, tells us that Harris dictated and he
wrote down The Lyric of the Golden Age, a poem of 381 pages, in
ninety-four hours! The Lyric of the Morning Land and other pretentious
works were produced in a similar manner.
"But," says William Howitt in his History of the Supernatural,
"the progress of Harris into an inspirational oratory is still more
surprising. He claims, by opening up his interior being, to receive influx of
divine intuition in such abundance and power as to throw off under its
influence the most astonishing strains of eloquence. This receptive and
communicative power he attributes to an internal spiritual breathing
corresponding to the outer natural breathing. As the body lungs imbibe air, so,
he contends, the spiritual lungs inspire and respire the divine aura, refluent
with the highest thought and purest sentiment, and that without any labor or
trial of brain."27
Spiritualism is one of the most direct lines of approach to Theosophy, since an
acceptance of the possibility of spiritistic phenomena is a prerequisite for
the adoption of the larger scheme of occult truth. Spiritualism covers a
portion of the ground embraced by the belief in reincarnation, and in so far
constitutes an introduction to it. Theosophy is further, an endorsement of the
primary position of the Spiritualists regarding the survival of the soul
entity, and thus commends itself to their approbation. The Spiritualists have
been considerably vexed by the question of reincarna-
______________
Inner Life (New York, 1853); and The Magic Staff (Boston, 1858).
He edited a periodical, The Herald of Progress.
27 Howitt's The History of the Supernatural, Vol. II, p. 228.
38
tion, and their ranks are split over the subject. Some of the message seem to
endorse it, others evade it, and some negate the idea. What is significant at
this point is that the Spiritualistic agitation prepared the way for Theosophic
conceptions. A large percentage of the first membership came from the ranks of
the Spiritualists.
But Spiritualism is but one facet of a human interest which has expressed
itself in all ages, embracing the various forms of mysticism, occultism,
esotericism, magic, healing, wonder-working, arcane science, and theurgy. The
growing acquaintance with Yoga practice and Hindu philosophy in this country
under the stimulus of many eloquent Eastern representatives has already been
mentioned. The demonstrations of mesmeric power lent much plausibility to
Oriental pretensions to extraordinary genius for that sort of thing. More than
might be supposed, there was prevalent in Europe and America alike a
never-dying tradition of magical art, a survival of Medieval European beliefs
in superhuman activities and powers both in man and nature. Among the rural and
unschooled populations this tradition assumed the form of harmless
superstitions. Among more learned peoples it issued in philosophic speculations
dealing with the spiritual energies of nature, the hidden faculties of man,
such as prophecy, tongues and ecstatic vision, and the extent and possibility
of man's control over the external world through the manipulation of a subtle
ether possessing magnetic quality. The heritage of Paracelsus, Robert Fludd,
Thomas Vaughn and Roger Bacon, Agrippa von Nettesheim, the Florentine
Platonists and their German, French, and English heirs still lingered. The
Christian scriptures were themselves replete with incidents of the
supernatural, with necromancy, witchcraft, miracles, ghost-walking, spirit
messages, symbolical dreams, and the whole armory of thaumaturgical exploits.
The doctrine of Satan was itself calculated to enliven the imagination with
ideas of demoniac possession, and was all the more credible by reason of the
prevalence of insanity which was ascribed to spirit obsession. The early
nineteenth
39
century was must closer to the Middle Ages than our own time is, not only
because education was less general, but also because a far larger proportion of
the population was agrarian instead of metropolitan. Such cults were, however,
by no means restricted to "backwoods" sections. They were
astonishingly prevalent in the larger centers. More enlightened groups accepted
a less crude form of the practices. Where knowledge ceases superstition may
begin; and the problems of life that press upon us for solution and that are
still beyond our grasp, lead the mind into every sort of rationalization or
speculation. Perhaps more people than acknowledge God in church pews believe in
the existence of intelligences that play a part in life, whether in answer to
prayer, in suggestive dreams, in occasional vision and apparitions, in messages
through mediums, or in whatever guise; and out of such an unreflective theology
arise many of the types of superstitious philosophy. To analyze this situation
in its entirety would take us into extensive fields of folk-lore and involve
every sort of old wives' tale imaginable. The chief point is that the varieties
of chimney-corner legend and omnipresent superstition have had their origin in
a larger primitive interpretation of the facts and forces of nature. They must
be recognized as the modern progeny of ancient hylozoism and animism. In the
childhood of our culture, as well as in the childhood of the race and of the
individual, there is a close sympathy between man and nature which leads him to
ascribe living quality to the external world. Countryside fables are doubtless
the jejune remnant of what was once felt to be a vital magnetic relation
between man's spirit and the spirit of the world. They are the distorted forms
of some of the ancient rites for effecting magical intercourse between man and
nature. While it is not to be inferred that Theosophy itself was built on the
material embodied in countryside credulity, it will be seen that the native
inclination toward an animistic interpretation of phenomena was in a measure
true to the deeper theses which the new cult presented. Madame Blavatsky
herself says in Isis Unveiled that the spontaneous re-
40
sponsiveness of the peasant mind is likely to lead to a closer apprehension of
the living spirit of Nature than can be attained by the sophistications of
reason.
The major tendencies in the direction of Theosophy have now been enumerated. It
remains only to mention the scattering of American students before 1875 whose
researches were taking them into the realm where the fundamentals of Theosophy
itself were to be found. We refer to the Rosicrucians, the Freemasons, the
Kabalists, Hermeticists, Egyptologists, Assyriologists, students of the
Mysteries, of the Christian origins, of the pagan cults, and the small but
gradually increasing number of Comparative Religionists and Philologists.28
There were men of intelligence both in Europe and America, who had kept on the
track of ancient and medieval esotericism, and the opening up of Sanskrit
literature gave a decided impetus to a renaissance of research in those realms.
The material that went into Frazer's Golden Bough, Ignatius
Donnelley's Atlantis: the Antediluvian World, Hargrave Jennings' The
Rosicrucians,
______________
28 That there was much very real theosophy among the early German Pietists who
settled north and west of Philadelphia in the Pennsylvania colony is indicated
by the following extract from The German Sectarians of Pennsylvania, by
Julius Friedrich Sachse (Vol. I, pp. 457 ff.). He says: "Thus far but
little attention has been given by writers on Pennsylvania history to the
influences exercised by the various mystical, theosophical and cabbalistic
societies and fraternities of Europe in the evangelization of this Province and
in reclaiming the German settlers from the rationalism with which they were
threatened by their contact with the English Quakers.
"Labadie's teachings; Boehme's visions; the true Rosicrucianism of the
original Kelpius party; the Philadelphian Society, whose chief apostle was Jane
Leade; the fraternity which taught the restitution of all things; the mystical
fraternity led by Dr. Julian Wilhelm Petersen and his wife Eleanor von
Merlau-both members of the Frankfort community-all found a foothold upon the
soil of Penn's colony and exercised a much larger share in the development of
this country than is accorded to them. It has even been claimed by some
superficial writers and historians of the day that there was no strain of
mysticism whatever in the Ephrata Community, or, in fact, connected with any of
the early German movements in Pennsylvania. Such a view is refuted by the
writings of Kelpius, Beissel, Miller, and many others who then lived, sought
the Celestial Bridegroom and awaited the millennium which they earnestly
believed to be near.
"With the advent of the Moravian Brethren in Pennsylvania the number of
these mystical orders was increased by the introduction of two others, viz.,
The Order of the Passion of Jesus (Der Orden des Leidens Jesu), of which Count
Zinzendorf was Grand Commander, and the Order of the Mustard Seed (Der Senfkorn
Orden)."
41
and many other compendious works of the sort, was being collated out of the
flotsam and jetsam of ancient survival and assembled into a picture beginning
to assume definite outline and more than haphazard meaning. The great system of
Neo-Platonism, the Gnostics, with Apollonius of Tyana, and Philo Judaeus were
coming under inspection. The universality of religious myths and rites was being
noted. In short, the large body of ancient thought, so deeply imbued with the
occult, was beginning to be scrutinized by the scholars of the nineteenth
century.
It was into this situation that Madame Blavatsky came. Her office, she said,
was that of a clavigera; she bore a key which would provide students
with a principle of integration for the loose material which would enable them
to piece together the scattered stones and glittering jewels picked up here and
there into a structure of surpassing grandeur and priceless worth. She would
show that the gems of literature, whose mystic profundity astonished and
perplexed the savants, were but the fragments of a once-glorious spiritual
Gnosis.
42
CHAPTER III
HELENA P. BLAVATSKY: HER LIFE AND
PSYCHIC CAREER
Who was Madame Blavatsky? Every new régime of belief or of social organization
must be studied with a view to determining as far as possible how much of the
movement is a contribution of the individuality of the founder and how much
represents a traditional deposit. This inquiry is of first importance in a
consideration of the Theosophical Society, because, more than in most systems,
the personal endowment of its founder gave it its specific coloring, character
and form. It should be said at this point that the career of Madame Blavatsky
as outlined here does not purport to be a complete or authoritative biography.
It was obviously impossible to undertake such an investigation of her life, as
the difficulties of obscure research in three or four continents were
practically prohibitive. We have been forced to base our study upon the body of
biographical material that has been assembled around her name, emanating,
first, from her relatives, secondly, from her followers and admirers, and
thirdly, from her critics. Her life, up to the age of forty-two, narrowly
escaped consignment to the realm of mythology, if not total oblivion, but was
at least partially redeemed to the status of history by the exertions of Mr. A.
P. Sinnett, who procured information from members of her own family in Russia.
His book, Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky, has been our chief
source of information about her youth and early career. The Countess
Wachtmeister's Reminiscences, Col. Olcott's Old Diary Leaves, V.
Solovyoff's A Modern Priestess of Isis and William Kingsland's The
Real Helena P. Blavatsky, together with Madame Blavatsky's own letters,
especially those to Mr. And Mrs. A. P. Sinnett, are the main works relied upon
to guide our
43
story. If the eventful life of our subject is to be further redeemed from
mystery and sheer tradition into which it already seems to be fading, a more
thorough critical study of it should be undertaken, based upon authentic data
collected from first-hand sources as far as this is possible.
It is to be understood, then, that the aim in this treatise is to present her
career as it is told and believed by Theosophists, although it is admittedly
already partly legendary. The precise extent it is to be regarded as
mythological must be left to the individual reader, and to future study, to
determine.
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was born in the Ukrainian city of Ekaterinoslaw on
the night between the 30th and 31st of July, 1831. Her father was Col. Peter
Hahn, and her mother previous to her marriage, Helene Fadeef. The father was
the son of Gen. Alexis Hahn von Rottenstern Hahn, from a noble family of
Mecklenberg, Germany, settled in Russia. Her mother's parents were Privy
Councillor Andrew Fadeef and the Princess Helene Dolgorouky. Madame Blavatsky's
grandfather was a cousin of Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn, the authoress. Her own
mother was known in the literary world between 1830 and 1840 under the nom de
plume of Zenaïda R.--the first novel writer that had ever appeared in Russia,
says the account. Though she died before her twenty-fifth year, she left some
dozen novels of the romantic school, most of which have been translated into
German. The theory of heredity would thus give us, apparently, abundant
background for whatever literary propensities the daughter was later to
display. On her mother's side she was a scion of the noble lineage of the
Dolgorouky's, who could trace direct connections with Russia's founder, Rurik,
and the Imperial line.
Madame Blavatsky came on to the Russian scene during a year fatal to the Slavic
nation, as to all Europe, owing to the decimation of the population by the
first visitation of the cholera. Her own birth was quickened by several deaths
in the household. She was ushered into the world amid coffins and sorrowing. The
infant was so sickly that a hurried baptism was resorted to in the effort to
anticipate death. During
44
the ceremony, which was signalized with elaborate Greek Catholic paraphernalia
of lighted tapers, the child-aunt of the baby accidentally set fire to the long
robes of the priest, who was severely burned. This incident was interpreted as
a bad omen, and in the eyes of the townsfolk the infant was doomed to a life of
trouble.
From the very date of her birth, a peculiar tradition operated to invest the
life of the growing child with an odor of superstition and mystic awe. In
Russia each household was supposed to be under the tutelary supervision of a
Domovoy, or house goblin, whose guardianship was propitious, except on March
30th, when, for mysterious reasons, he became mischievous. But the tradition
strangely excepted from this malevolent spell of the Domovoy those born on the
night of July 30-31, a time closely associated in the annals of popular belief
with witches and their doings. The child came early to learn why it was that,
on every recurring March 30th, she was carried around the house, stables and
cowpen and made personally to sprinkle the four corners with water, while the
nurse repeated some mystic incantation. Her first conscious recognition of
herself must thus have been tinged with a feeling that she was in some
particular fashion set apart, that she was somehow the object of special care
and attention from invisible powers.
The Dnieper aided in weaving a spell of enchantment about her infancy. No
Cossack of Southern Ukraine ever crosses it without preparing himself for
death. Along its banks, where the child strolled with her nurses, the Rusalky
(undines, nymphs) haunted the willow trees and the rushes. She was told that
she was impervious to their influences, and in this sense of superiority she
alone dared to approach those sandy shores. She had heard the servants' tales
of these nymphs. Filled with this realization of her favored standing with the
Rusalky, she one day threatened a youngster who had roused her displeasure that
she would have the nymphs tickle him to death, whereupon the lad ran wildly
away and was found dead on the sands--whether from fright or from having
stumbled into one of the treach-
45
erous sandpits which the swirling waters quickly turn into whirlpools.
Her mother died when Mlle. Hahn was still a child. She and her younger sister
were taken to live with her father, in barracks with his regiment, and until
the age of eleven, they were entertained, amused and spoiled as les enfants
du régiment. After that they went to live at Saratow with their
grandmother, where their grandfather was civil governor. The child was
"alternately petted and punished, spoiled and hardened," and was
difficult to manage. She was of uncertain health, "ever sick and
dying," a sleep walker, and given to abnormal psychic peculiarities,
ascribed by her orthodox nurses to possession by the devil; so that, as she
afterwards said, "she was drenched with enough holy water to float a
ship," and exorcised by priests. She was a born rebel against restraint,
and went into ungovernable fits of passion, which left her violently shaken;
but at the opposite apogee of her disposition she was filled with impulses of
the extremest kindliness and affection. Through life she had this dual temper.
Those who knew her better nature tolerated the irascible element. She was
lively, highly-gifted, full of humor, and of remarkable doing. She had a
passionate curiosity for everything savoring of the weird, the uncanny, the
mysterious; she was strangely attracted by the theme of death. Her imagination,
wildly roaming, appeared to create about her a world of fairy or elfish
creatures with whom she held converse in whispers by the hour. She defied all
and everything. She had to be watched lest she escape from the house and mingle
with ragged urchins. She preferred to listen to the tales of Madame Peigneur
(her governess) than do her lessons. She would openly rebel against her
text-books and run off to the woods or hide in the dusky corridors of the
basement of the great house where her grandfather lived. In a secluded dark
recess in the "Catacombs" she had erected a barrier of old broken
chairs and tables, and there, up near the ceiling under an iron-barred window,
she would secrete herself for hours, reading a book of popular legends known as
Solomon's Wisdom. At times she bent to her books in a
46
spasm of scholarly devotion to amend for mischief making. Her grandparents'
enormous library was then the object of her constant interest. No less
passionately would she drink in the wonders of narratives given in her
presence. Every fairy-tale became a living event to her.
She would be found speaking to the stuffed animals and birds in the museum in
the old house. She said the pigeons were cooing fairy-tales to her. She heard a
voice in every natural object; nature was animate and, to her, articulate. She
seemed to know the inner life and secrets of every species of insect, bird, and
reptile found about the place. She would recreate their past and describe
vividly their feelings. At this early date she detailed the events of the past
incarnations of the stuffed animals in the museum.
Times without number the little girl was heard conversing with playmates of her
own age, invisible to others. There was in particular a little hunchback boy, a
favorite phantom companion of her solitude, for whose neglect by the servants
and nurses she was often excited to resentment.
"But amidst the strange double life she thus led from her earliest
recollections, she would sometimes have visions of a mature protector, whose
imposing appearance dominated her imagination from a very early period. This
protector was always the same, his features never changed; in after life she
met him as a living man and knew him as though she had been brought up in his
presence."1
In the neighborhood of the residence was an old man, a magician, whose doings
filled the mind of the young seeress with wonder. The old man, a centenarian,
learned to know the young girl and he used to say of her: "This little
lady is quite different from all of you. There are great events lying in wait
for her in the future. I feel sorry in thinking that I will not live to see my
predictions of her verified; but they will all come to pass!"
Her whole career is dotted with miraculous escapes from
______________
1 Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky, by A. P. Sinnett
(Theosophical Publishing Society, London, 1913), p. 35. See also footnote at
bottom of page 155, in Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett (New
York, Frederick A. Stokes Co.,
47
danger and still more miraculous recoveries from wounds, sicknesses and fevers.
One of the first appearances of a protective hand in her life came far back in
her childhood. She had always entertained a marked curiosity about a curtained
portrait in her grandfather's castle at Saratow. It was hung so high that it
was far beyond her reach. Denied permission to see it, she awaited her
opportunity to catch a glimpse of it by stealth; and when left alone on one
occasion she dragged a table to the wall, set another table on that, and a
chair on top, and managed to clamber up. On tiptoe she just contrived to pull
back the curtain. The sight of the picture was so startling that she made an
involuntary movement backwards, lost her balance and toppled with her pyramid
to the floor. In falling she lost consciousness; but when she came to her
senses some moments afterwards, she was amazed to see the tables, chairs, and
everything in proper order in the room. The curtain was slipped back again on
the rings, and no mark of the episode was left except the imprint of her small
hand on the wall high up beside the picture.
At another time, when she was nearing the age of fourteen, her riding horse
bolted and flung her, with her foot caught in the stirrup. As the animal
plunged forward she expected to be dragged to death, but felt herself buoyed up
by a strange force, and escaped without a scratch.
It was not many years more until the young girl's possession of gifts and
extraordinary faculties, commonly classed as mediumistic, became an admitted
fact among her relatives and close associates. She would answer questions
locating lost property, or solving other perplexities of the household. She
sometimes blurted out to visitors that they would die, or meet with misfortune
or accident; and her prophecies usually came true.
In 1844 the father, Col. Hahn, took Helena for her first journey abroad. She
went with him to Paris and London, but proved a troublesome charge.
Her youthful marriage deserves narration with some fulness, if only because it
precipitated the lady out of her home
48
and into that phase of her career which has been referred to as her period of
preparation and apprenticeship. As her aunt, Madame Fadeef, describes her
marriage:
"she cared not whether she should get married or not. She had been simply
defied one day by her governess to find any man who would be her husband, in
view of her temper and disposition. The governess, to emphasize the taunt, said
that even the old man she had found so ugly and had laughed at so much calling
him a 'plumeless raven,' that even he would decline her for his wife. That was
enough; three days afterwards she made him propose, and then, frightened at
what she had done, sought to escape from her joking acceptance of his offer.
But it was too late. All she knew and understood was--when too late--that she
was now forced to accept a master she cared nothing for, nay, that she hated;
that she was tied to him by the law of the country, hand and foot. A 'great
horror' crept upon her, as she explained it later; one desire, ardent,
unceasing, irresistible, got hold of her entire being, led her on, so to say,
by the hand, forcing her to act instinctively, as she would have done if, in
the act of saving her life, she had been running away from a mortal danger.
There had been a distinct attempt to impress her with the solemnity of
marriage, with her future obligations and her duties to her husband and married
life. A few hours later at the altar she heard the priest saying to her: 'Thou
shalt honor and obey thy husband,' and at this hated word 'shalt' her young
face--for she was hardly seventeen--was seen to flush angrily, then to become
deadly pale. She was overheard to mutter in response through her set
teeth--'Surely I shall not.'
"And surely she has not. Forthwith she determined to take the law and her
future life into her own hands, and--she left her husband forever, without
giving him an opportunity to ever even think of her as his wife.
"Thus Madame Blavatsky abandoned her country at seventeen and passed ten
long years in strange and out-of-the-way places,--in Central Asia, India, South
America, Africa and Eastern Europe."2
True, before taking this drastic step she acceded to her father's plea to do
the conventional thing; and she let the old General take her, though even then
not without attempts to escape, on what may by courtesy of language be called a
______________
2 Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky, by A. P. Sinnett, pp.
39-40.
49
honeymoon, which drawled out, amid bickerings, to a length of three months, and
was terminated after a bitter quarrel by the bride's dash for freedom on
horseback. Gen. Blavatsky by this time saw the impossibility of the situation
and acceded to the inevitable.
Tracing the life of Madame Blavatsky from this event through her
personally-conducted globe-roaming becomes difficult, owing to the meagreness
of information. Her relatives and her later Theosophic associates have done
their best to piece together the crazy-quilt design of her wanderings and
attendant events of any significance. She herself kept no chronicle of her
journeys, and it was only at long intervals, when she emerged out of the
deserts or jungles of a country to visit its metropolis, or when she needed to
write for money, that she sent letters back home. The family was at first
alarmed by her defection from the fireside, but were constrained to acquiesce
in the situation by their recognition of her immitigable distaste for her
veteran husband. If no other tie kept her attached to the home circle, her need
of funds obliged her to keep in touch with her father, who supplied her with
money without betraying her confidences as to her successive destinations. He
acceded to her plans because he had tried in vain to secure a Russian divorce;
and he felt that a few years of travel for his daughter might best ease the
family situation. Ten years elapsed before the fugitive saw her relatives
again.
Her first emergence after her disappearance was in Egypt. She seems to have
traveled there with a Countess K------, and at that time began to pick up some
occult teaching of a poorer sort. She encountered an old Copt, a man with a
great reputation as a magician. She proved an apt pupil, and the instructor
became so much interested in her that when she revisited Egypt years later, the
special attention he (then a retired ascetic) showed her, attracted the notice
of the populace at Bulak.
After her appearance in Eg