Secret Societies
Theosophical Society
Also Known As Theosophy The name of the movement; the entry is stored as its Society.
Theosophical Societies
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
Origin 1875
The Theosophical Society is an organization founded to advance a comparative study of religion, philosophy, and science and to investigate the hidden laws of nature and the latent powers of the human being. Its teachings, set out in works such as Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine, describe a perennial wisdom underlying all traditions, an evolution of the soul through many lives, and a hierarchy of spiritual teachers called Masters or Mahatmas. Its three stated objects include forming a nucleus of universal human fellowship without distinction of race, creed, or sex.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period Origin PeriodThe Society for Psychical Research investigation of 1885 judged the phenomena fraudulent, and the Masters have no independent attestation 1Tradition: Modern Western esotericism Origin PeriodThe Society presented its teaching as communicated by a hidden brotherhood of Mahatmas in Tibet, evidenced by letters received by phenomenal means 1Tradition: Modern Western esotericism Place of OriginNew York City, New York, United States 2 FounderHelena Blavatsky, Henry Steel Olcott and William Quan Judge 2 Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern UseBlavatsky's root-race anthropology, set out in The Secret Doctrine, was taken up by the Ariosophists of Austria and Germany and passed from them into Nazi racial occultism 3 Contested or Appropriated Modern UseThe Society did not intend that use and has repudiated it, and the transmission is nonetheless documented 3 Organisation
Who May Belong GovernanceA federation of autonomous member organisations 1 Status
Status TodayLiving tradition, practised today 1 Learn More
The Society That Carried Asian Ideas West, and Split Over a Messiah
The Theosophical Society did more than almost any nineteenth-century body to move Indian and Buddhist vocabulary into Western popular religion, and its internal history is a record of how unstable a movement built on claimed hidden Masters can be.
Three objects and a doctrine
Founded in New York in 1875 by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Henry Steel Olcott and William Quan Judge, and headquartered from 1882 at Adyar near Madras, the society set out three objects, the first being a nucleus of universal human fellowship without distinction of race, creed or sex. Its books, above all The Secret Doctrine, described a perennial wisdom underlying all traditions, the evolution of the soul through many lives, and a hierarchy of Masters.
Schism as a way of life
Because authority rested on communication with unseen Masters rather than on an institution, the society fractured repeatedly, after the death of Blavatsky in 1891 and again over the leadership of Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater. The proclamation of the young Jiddu Krishnamurti as the coming world-teacher, and his later repudiation of that role, drove the largest breaks, including the departure of Rudolf Steiner. Scholars such as Godwin and Hammer treat the society as the seedbed of a great deal of twentieth-century alternative spirituality, whatever one makes of its claims.
Three Objects, and One Investigation That Would Not Go Away
The society declared three objects and they have barely changed: to form a nucleus of universal brotherhood without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour; to encourage the comparative study of religion, philosophy and science; and to investigate the unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in humanity. The first is the reason the society matters historically. It committed itself, in the 1870s, to a position on race and sex that most institutions around it did not hold.
The society's Indian phase had consequences nobody planned. Working from Adyar, its members supported Sanskrit scholarship and Buddhist revival, and Olcott's work in Ceylon fed directly into a Sinhalese Buddhist revival that outlasted the society's involvement. A great deal of what the twentieth century West thought it knew about karma, reincarnation and the subtle body arrived through this channel.
The investigation is the Hodgson report. The Society for Psychical Research sent Richard Hodgson to Adyar and published his conclusion in 1885 that the Mahatma letters were written by Blavatsky and her associates. The finding stood for a century. In 1986 the same society published Vernon Harrison's reassessment, which found Hodgson's handwriting analysis unsound and his procedure prosecutorial, without establishing that the letters were genuine. Both documents are on the record and neither settles the question.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Derived from This
Anthroposophy separates from Theosophy over Steiner's refusal of the Order of the Star in the East and its christology, and takes much of the German membership with it.
Founded after Bailey's departure from the Theosophical Society's Esoteric Section; the same structural break the Anthroposophical Society made with the same parent organisation a decade earlier.
Founded By
Blavatsky founded the society in New York in 1875 with Henry Steel Olcott and William Quan Judge, and supplied its doctrinal literature.
Related To
Shambhala is a Kalachakra hidden kingdom. Its Western career, as a hidden centre of the masters, comes through Theosophy and then through Roerich.
The astral plane as a mapped level with its own inhabitants is a Theosophical formulation, set out by Leadbeater and then taken up by the Golden Dawn and everything downstream of it. The word astral is much older, running back through Paracelsus to Neoplatonic writing on the soul vehicle. What Theosophy supplied is the plane, not the adjective.
Successor Of
Became the Theosophical Society's second president in 1907, succeeding its founder Helena Blavatsky, who had died in 1891.
Sources
Essays About This Entity (2 essays)
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
Choose a year to see this entry's facts and connections as the atlas records them at that moment: what it held then, what it held instead, and what it had not yet adopted. Choose Present for the current record.