Secession Under William Quan Judge

William Quan Judge, an Irish American lawyer and one of the Theosophical Society's three original 1875 founders, had built the American Section into the Society's largest and most active national body by the 1890s, but his standing came under sustained attack after Henry Steel Olcott and Annie Besant accused him in 1894 of forging letters he claimed came from the Mahatmas, the hidden teachers Blavatsky said had guided her work. Judge denied the charges and refused to submit to a formal judicial committee's investigation, arguing the Society's constitution barred it from adjudicating questions of occult phenomena, and matters came to a head at the American Section's convention in Boston in April 1895.

There, delegates representing the great majority of American lodges voted to declare the American Section a fully autonomous society rather than accept continued oversight from Adyar, and Olcott responded by revoking the charters of the seceding lodges, formalizing a split between the original Adyar based Theosophical Society and a new, independent American body under Judge's presidency. The new organization retained the name Theosophical Society in America for its first years, positioning itself as the legitimate continuation of Judge's branch of the founders' original vision even as the Adyar Society continued to regard itself as the sole authentic successor to Blavatsky and Olcott.