THE FORMATION OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
It was in 1874 that the American Colonel Henry S. Olcott became interested in spiritual phenomena and was sent by The New York Daily Graphic to investigate the happenings at the Eddy farmstead in Chittenden in Vermont. His reports were published in the newspaper and were read by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, a Russian emigrant who was interested in such matters. She decided to see the reported phenomena for herself so it was on a sunny Autumnal day that the founders of our Society first met at the Eddy farmstead.
In Olcott’s history of the Society, Old Diary Leaves, he describes the meeting in detail. Blavatsky had a striking appearance which immediately attracted Olcott and on the pretext of offering her a light for her cigarette he fell into conversation with her. They became friends at once. Olcott said “Each of us felt as if we were of the same social world, cosmopolitans, free thinkers... It was the voice of common sympathy with the higher occult side of man and nature; the attraction of soul to soul.”[1]
It was in the autumn of the following year that Blavatsky and Olcott along with William Q Judge founded the Theosophical Society in New York, initially for the study of the occult. Olcott says in Old Diary Leaves “It was to be a body for the collection and diffusion of knowledge for occult research and the study and dissemination of ancient philosophical and theosophical ideas”.[2]
He also says that initially the idea of brotherhood was not there. However, later, when the influence of the Society moved from West to East and to relations with Asian Races and their social systems that Brotherhood became a necessity and the cornerstone of the Society. According to Olcott the Theosophical Society was an evolution, not a planned creation.
Theosophical ideas began to spread from America to Europe and beyond. By 1894, 394 charters had been granted to branches worldwide. “This wonderful organisation, which grew out of a commonplace parlour gathering in a New York house in the year 1875, has already made for itself such a record that it must be included in any veracious history of our times” declared Olcott in Old Diary Leaves.[3]
The London branch was formed on the 27 June 1878 under the title The British Theosophical Society; its name was changed in 1884 to the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society. Olcott records that it was founded for the purpose of discovering the nature and powers of the human soul and spirit by investigation and experiment. The object of the society was to increase the amounts of human health, goodness, knowledge, wisdom and happiness. The members pledged themselves to endeavour, to the best of their powers, to live a life of temperance, purity and brotherly love. They believed in a “Great First Intelligent Cause” and in the “Divine 'Sonship'” of the spirit of man and hence in the immortality of that spirit and in the “Universal Brotherhood” of the human race.
HPB wrote the following “As the highest development, physically and spiritually, on earth of the creative cause, man should aim to solve the mystery of his being… He should…study to develop his latent powers, and inform himself respecting the laws of magnetism, electricity, and all other forms of force whether of the seen or unseen universe.”[4]
Olcott adds this: “The Society teaches and expects its fellows (members) to personally exemplify the highest morality and religious aspirations; to oppose the materialism of science and every form of dogmatic theology…; to make known among Western nations the long-suppressed facts about Oriental religious philosophies, their ethics, chronology, esotericism and symbolism…and finally and chiefly, to aid in the institution of the brotherhood of humanity, where in all good and pure men of every race shall recognise each other as the equal effects (upon this planet) of the One Universal, Infinite and Everlasting Cause”.[5]
HPB wrote her first book, Isis Unveiled under instruction from the Masters. It was completed in 1877 and she declared herself to be but a channel through which a tide of fresh, vital essence was being poured into the stagnant pool of modern spiritual thought.
Theosophy - Divine Wisdom, or the Perennial Philosophy - pre-dates the Christian era. Much of its teaching had necessarily remained secret in order to preserve its purity and to prevent its abuse. Madam Blavatsky, acting as the amanuensis of her Teachers had the particular task of making public some aspects of the archaic doctrine which hitherto had been reserved for the few. For the first time in history, in her writings HPB expressed in plain terms and in a European language, esoteric knowledge gathered from ancient manuscripts from around the World.
Jenny Baker
