History of the Adepts

The early 20th century literary scene in California accounts for many of the natal charts in the Brotherhood of Light books. Jack London died in 1916, a year before Norman and Genevieve Astley returned to California, two years before the Brotherhood of Light opened to the public. His father was an eminent astrologer, his mother a Spiritualist medium, but his tone and attitude towards California occultists is affectionately mocking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl6rHgT5tIg

Second only to Upton Sinclair among prolific and famous California authors of the early twentieth century, Jack London achieved huge literary success at a young age despite modest origins. I have now read two of the autobiographical novels set partly in California, The Sea-Wolf and Martin Eden and am engaged in a 2017 biography of London by Earle Labor.

London’s natal Sun in Capricorn is one degree from that of his father of record, astrological author W. H. Chaney. The biographical record is unclear as to whether Chaney was his biological father.

Patrick Bowen discovered the Thomas Moore Johnson correspondence just when I had gotten interested mostly due to Sarah Stanley Grimke and Thomas H. Burgoyne; Ronnie had gotten interested mostly due to research on Alexander Wilder and fellow Platonists. Ronnie’s presentation to the 2022 International Theosophical History Conference is well worth a listen to my friends and colleagues in The Church of Light. Patrick Bowen and I enjoyed working with him.

In 2022 I was invited to participate in an International Theosophical History Conference, where I spoke about the interaction of Cayce and Theosophy in my own research and the larger New Age of the late 20th century. Henceforth I am restricting my blog posts to twentieth century topics due to relentless distracting twenty-first century noise about my nineteenth century research topics. My book on Cayce did not attract one single negative review or public comment, nor any online denunciations as far as I know. So it was fun to write about my twentieth century encounters with a twentieth century spiritual movement based on my home turf. In future I will serialize the book in this blog, updated with comments and illustrations for each section.

Upton Sinclair had written almost 100 books when Walt Disney adapted The Gnome Mobile for the movies in 1967. When Disney’s natal chart was published in the Brotherhood of Light lessons, he was near the beginning of a career of major accomplishments.

Excerpts from the Autobiography; the full text is available here:

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair.

Lincoln Steffens figures prominently in Sinclair’s historical novels, but also in his autobiography. His writings will feature in 2024 posts.

Steffens and I became friends at that time. He remained always one of my closest and dearest friends, and we met whenever we were in the same neighborhood. In 1914, I remember, he came out to Croton, near New York, where we had rented a little house, and spent several weekends with us.  Once I took him for a tramp in the snow before he had his coffee.

By the time that Norman and Genevieve Astley moved to Carmel Woods, Lincoln Steffens lived nearby, and Sinclair wrote enthusiastically about an extended visit to the area:

On to Carmel, a town that boasts more scenery to the square mile than any other place I know, a broad beach, bordered by deep pine woods and flanked by rocky headlands; at one side a valley, with farms, a river running through it and mountains beyond.

Tramping the hills and forests and beaches of Carmel, riding horseback over the Seventeen Mile Drive, there began to haunt my brain a vision of a blank-verse tragedy; the story of a child of the coal mines who is adopted by rich people and educated, and finally becomes a leader of social revolution.

That poem never materialized. Later in the 1920s Sinclair and his second wife Mary Craig Kimbrough Sinclair acquired a beachfront cottage in southern California where she became immersed in psychical research later reported in Mental Radio:

We had made too many friends and incurred too many obligations in Pasadena, so we found a cottage down on the oceanfront near Alamitos Bay, Long Beach, and moved there.  During both of my trips to Boston, Craig stayed alone in the little beach cottage and never minded it. Somehow she felt safe, and the waves on the other side of the boardwalk lulled her to sleep.  She had become fascinated with the problem of her own mind, and studied it with the help of scores of books that I had got for her.  I still have more than a hundred volumes on psychology and philosophy and psychic research that she had read and marked—Bergson, William James, William McDougall.

Bergson and William James are the first two of only three writers recommended in The Quest of the Spirit in 1913 which marks an important congruence of Mrs. Sinclair’s studies with those of the Astleys.

Those who serve God truly in this age serve the ideal of brotherhood, of helping our fellow-beings, instead of exploiting their labor, and beating them down and degrading them in order to exploit them more easily.  The religion I am talking about is not yet “established.” It rarely dwells in temples built with hands, nor is it financed with bond issues underwritten by holders of front pews.  It does not have an ordained priesthood, nor enjoy the benefit of apostolic succession. It is not dressed in gold and purple robes ,nor are its altar cloths embroidered with jewels.  It does not honor the rich  and powerful, nor sanctify interest and dividends, nor lend support to political machines, nor sprinkle holy water upon flags and cannon, nor send young men out to slaughter and be slaughtered in the name of the Prince of Peace.

This is an eloquent summary of Sinclair’s spiritual values at age 85.

This valuable contribution by Stanislav Panin, a graduate student at Rice University, is subtitled “The Past and the Future of ‘Going Native in Reverse’ in the Study of Esotericism.” I share this with special appreciation for the situation he describes about Esoteric Studies in the 2020s which reflects my own experiences in the 1990s.

Excerpts:

In any case, we see that academia influenced the development of Western esotericism, and esoteric groups influenced academic research throughout the 20th century. However, what is the future of their interaction, if there is any future at all? I see the following four general tendencies related to this problem:

1. Integration of the members of esoteric groups into the academic field, i.e. the process of “going native in reverse”;

 2. Rejection of works as “too esoteric” by a number of scholars and the  growth of (neo)empiricism in their research;

 3. Creation of “Esoteric Theology” as a field.

 4. Rejection of projects considered as “too scholarly” (in the form of either “esoteric studies” or “esoteric theology” by those insiders who have an an inimical attitude toward rationalism and the academia. (p7)

 We should also keep in mind that, on the other hand, esoteric and pagan communities may abandon any attempts to use the analytical mind and the academic approach to esotericism because many followers of esoteric movements have an inimical attitude toward rationalism and to academia in general. After my report, related to the history of the academic study of esotericism in Russia, which was presented at one semi-academic conference dedicated to the study of esotericism, one woman said “How dare you scientists? Scholars use your poor rational mind to explore universal esoteric truth? How can you understand with your rational mind super-rational reality?” This was not the only case when people reacted in such manner when they heard about the academic study of esotericism. Some of them write critical reviews in their blogs, in social networks, on different websites where they blame scholars for their approach too rational for the study of esotericism. Therefore, we should consider that it is a point of view of numerous people from different esoteric groups. (p8)

This passage from the chapter The Conquest of War is in Cosmic Alchemy, Volume 17 of the Brotherhood of Light Lessons, and is relevant to the early 20th century politics of California but also the present moment in 2023 globally:

No truly spiritual individual can put any one of these four freedoms aside with a shrug and the platitude that he is not his brother’s keeper. He should recognize that he is an intelligent cell in the body of the Cosmic Man, and that as such he has a part to play in carrying out the Divine Plan of universal progression. It is his mission to exert his energies, to the fullest extent he is capable, toward assisting other cells in the body of the Cosmic Man to develop to their highest possibilities. The deific objective calls for the fullest cooperation of all in its attainment. And every individual has a responsibility, that rightly he cannot shirk, to exert as much pressure as he is capable toward advancing the real interests of other members of society. To the extent of his abilities and opportunities each is responsible for the progress of society as a whole. But before the individual, no matter how spiritually inclined and energetic, can be of service toward the advancement of the race, he must know what things really contribute to race advancement, and what things are destructive.

If he permits his opinions to be directed by popular vogue, or if, in the erroneous belief it is spiritual, he supports fanaticism, no matter how good his intentions, instead of assisting human progress, he is a hindrance, and often a nuisance besides. Our popular reformers, no doubt, find great self-satisfaction, but more often than not, in the ignorance both of human nature and of what constitutes real welfare, they make a sorry muddle of their own and other people’s lives. Before we can advance the interests of the race through publicly and privately advocating right measures, through the ballot box, and through personal example, we must know what things rightly may be expected to benefit society. It is the province of cosmic alchemy to provide this information.

A few chapters into Sinclair’s 1962 autobiography published in his eighty-fourth year, I find him discovering Carmel as a friendly place for writers and artists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIJNjOzowuE&t=21s

Whatever happened to the Adepts and Initiates? No new evidence has come to my attention about other characters in The Masters Revealed and its sequel, but these eighteen have been research subjects for various articles and books published over the last three decades, often noted in this blog individually.

Albert L. Rawson has been the subject of biographical articles by John Patrick Deveney and discussed in a book by Susan Nance featured in this blog.  His colorful family life is much better understood due to the proliferation of new genealogical and local history information online.

Max Theon, born Louis M. Bimstein, has been featured in several new and forthcoming books from Israel that shed new light on the Cosmic Philosophy he espoused with his wife Alma Theon. Letters to the Sage provides some new information on Theon as a figure in the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor.

Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani and his associates Charles-Ernest Renan and Henri Rochefort were all discussed by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt as meeting with Mme. Blavatsky, Colonel Olcott, and Mohini Chatterji in March 1884 in Paris.  Three recent books by Dominic Green explore this evidence which confirms a relationship I had hypothesized in 1990.

Maria, Duchese de Pomar and Countess of Caithness, was investigated in Art Magic by Marc Demarest in association with Emma Harding Britten’s Chevalier Louis de B— and later in my own introduction to Sarah Stanley Grimke’s Collected Works. Richard Francis Burton is also investigated in the same volume as another prototype for the Chevalier. Burton’s associate in Damascus, Abdelkader, Sufi sheikh from Algeria, is subject of a new biography mentioned in this blog.

Blavatsky’s publisher Mikhail Katkov is prominently featured in Katya Hokanson’s 2022 A Woman’s Empire by a scholar of Russian language and literature. Ranbir Singh, Maharaja of Kashmir, is also illuminated by this book’s discussion of The Durbar in Lahore.

James Martin Peebles is discussed at length in relation to the Bengal Renaissance in my chapter for Imagining the East, as are Mohini Chatterji and Norendro Nath Sen.

A.P. Sinnett and A.O. Hume are explored in relation to the Mahatma Letters and Richard Hodgson in my foreword and appendix to the reprint of Hurrychund Chintamon’s Commentary on the Text of the Bhagavad-Gita.

But two cases where progress is uncertain are those of “Ooton Liatto” and “Paolos Metamon” whose names cannot be solidly confirmed with historical evidence and may be aliases. “Agardi Metrovitch” likewise cannot be solidly linked with a historical name, but the latest evidence from a Hungarian researcher suggests he was opera singer Giovanni Metrovitch. Forthcoming volumes of letters by Blavatsky and her book The Durbar in Lahore may offer new clues to these and other mysteries.

This week I received a hardcover of Armies of God, a library copy from Cheshire, England, and Dominic Green’s out-of-print 2007 study does provide citations for the statements made in his 2022 book. On page 196 he describes the meeting of Theosophical leaders with Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, witnessed by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt:

In Paris, he had no shortage of visitors. Urabist exiles, Catholic nationalists, Irish revolutionaries, religious cranks, and Wilfrid Blunt. When Blunt visited in March 1884, he found the Sage of the East lecturing to a very curious party of strangers. They were led by Madame Helena Blavatsky, the Russian Jewish [sic, no one ever called her Jewish but many called her an anti-Semite] inventor of Theosophy, a fashionable medley of spiritualism, personality cult, and quasi-scientific search for the common roots of all religion. Blavatsky saw Afghani as an authentic Persian mystic, one of those “Aryans” who seemed somehow related to Theosophical sources. He was also the ex-Master of the Star in the East lodge at Alexandria, many of whose founders had been inspired by Blavatsky when she had visited Egypt to study Sufism.

Both shaping new ideologies to bridge East and West, and both convinced of their imminent global triumph, Blavatsky and Afghani met to discuss a third mystic. What, he asked Blavatsky, did Afghani think of the Madhi? She thought he must be a humanitarian, because he sought against the Ottoman and British empires, but she was really troubled by his attachment to the slave trade.

The source of the author’s information is revealed in the endnotes, which I had not found in the new book. The citation reads: 27 March 1884, Blunt, Gordon, 208-209. Green comments:

For several possible reasons, Blunt does not name the “Russian Lady” as Madame Blavatsky. Her companions were Col. H.S. Alcott [sic], founder of the Theosophical Society, and two Bengali Hindu adepts on their way to study for the bar in London. Blavatsky and Alcott came to Europe to meet with their London and Paris lodges and to lobby the British Foreign Office for the religious rights of Ceylonese Hindus.

Here is the Blunt book about Gordon in Khartoum:

Gordon at Khartoum – Google Books

The “collective biography” genre includes most of my writing, and like its predecessor this one features 32 main characters in turn of the (20th) century esoteric circles. The distinction between “Adepts and Mahatmas” and “Initiates” in the two books is generational, not an attempt to define them as inherently at different spiritual levels. The latter are generally younger and were disciples or associates of the former. Due to the voluminous discussion of some of these Initiates by Dominic Green in The Religious Revolution, I have posted the introduction to Initiates of Theosophical Masters on academia.edu.

Powerpoint slides from a 2022 conference and a book introduction from 1998 are now shared on academia:

https://www.academia.edu/107323023/Blavatsky_in_Edgar_Cayces_Library

https://www.academia.edu/106481276/Edgar_Cayce_in_Context_Introduction

Here is the text I wrote to narrate the Powerpoint slides:

Blavatsky in Edgar Cayce’s Library—talk for 10/5/22

My initial interest in Theosophical history resulted from an encounter with a large collection of books, many by Theosophical authors, at the newly opened A.R.E. Library and Conference Center in Virginia Beach in the 1970s. This led eventually to two dozen other libraries in America, France, England, and India, and to publication of three books by SUNY Press as part of its Western Esoteric Traditions series. The first two focused on Theosophical origins in Europe and Asia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

• My last book in the series has a very different focus with a central figure who spent his entire life in the American South, who was a faithful churchgoer and popular Sunday School teacher—hardly comparable to Helena Blavatsky’s global travels and language proficiency. The cover shows Edgar Cayce in similar attire and pose over five decades, from his mid-twenties to his mid- sixties from bottom to top. Although they clearly are photographs of the same person, a professional photographer himself, each decade defines a different stage in his development as a clairvoyant counselor. Son of a farm family in rural Christian County, Kentucky, he moved to the county seat Hopkinsville where he worked as a bookstore clerk. A mysterious loss of his voice for months led to a local medical doctor placing him in trance and asking him to diagnose his affliction and recommend a course of treatment. The treatment’s success led to local media attention as Cayce was used as a medical clairvoyant by osteopaths, allopaths, and chiropractors. Eventually he made national headlines in 1910. His photography career took him to Selma, Alabama, where he joined the Birmingham TS in 1922 and soon thereafter delivered a lecture there. By 1925 when his spiritual source directed him to relocate to Virginia Beach, past life readings entered his vocabulary and brought Atlantis and ancient Egypt into the picture. Medical readings still predominated through the brief history of the Cayce Hospital and the National Society of Investigators. The Association for Research and Enlightenment, founded in 1931, defines his shift of focus as the clients for his readings become more numbers and the questions they ask more complicated. Astrology, the Great White Brotherhood, Earth Changes, along with other predictions of world events, missing persons become elements in the organizational synthesis. Finally, in the 1940s another new emphasis appears, as the Search for God books are created in dialogue with Study Group Number 1 in Norfolk which solicits each reading and then responds with further questions. Practical occultism, yoga, self-awareness of attitudes and emotions, the Collective Unconscious, all reflect Theosophists, Fourth Way disciples, students of analytic psychology, posing questions to Cayce from all over the country. Through every phase of his career, however, the Bible is always the most frequently cited source and he claimed to have read it from cover to cover every year of his life.

• Along with the 14000+ transcribed trance discourses recorded by Cayce’s secretary, the library collection also includes more than 80,000 books on related subjects: Alternative medicine, metaphysical spirituality, esoteric lore about lost civilzations. Blavatsky is one of the most influential writers of the 19th century in this collection.
• I grew up familiar with the Cayces as a child because my five first cousins in Virginia Beach were all related to Edgar’s wife Gertrude Cayce through the House family with whom the Cayces in 1930. My uncle Cecil’s wife Irma Anderson had a younger sister married to Thomas House Jr.
• Dr. House had come to Kentucky to become director of the Cayce Hospital, and after his who untimely death his widow and son lived with the Cayces.
• The A.R.E. lost ownership of the hospital building during the Depression which went through various uses before being bought again in 1955.
• The area along the Virginia Beach boardwalk is completely transformed from its appearance during Cayce’s life. This scene is of a community filled with hotels and rooming houses as well as private beach cottages.
• By 2022 the boardwalk area had lost every vestige of historic frame architecture.
• Doris Anderson married Tommy House in 1936 and they lived with her mother intermittently while raising three children, until Mrs. Anderson died in 1974.
• Dolly Rice, who published under her married name as Doris Agee, was the firstborn of all the Rice cousins, and in 1969 became the author of an extremely successful small paperback that was among the earliest of a series of Cayce related paperbacks.
• Her younger cousin Caroline House was called Stephanie in this 1973 book about the past life reading she had received from Edgar at the time of her birth, and her quest to confirm his statement that her most recent past life was as the Woman’s Suffrage and Temperance leader Frances Willard.
• In conclusion, regarding Theosophy and its influence, the beginning of past life readings thereafter must be related to his exposure to Theosophy where Leadbeater had been providing them for years. Although his health readings combine allopathic, homeopathic, osteopathic, and naturopathic treatments, the context always include New Thought and Spiritualist approaches to spiritual healing as well. Cayce’s interpretation of Christianity manifested his own roots in Disciples theology, mixed up with endorsements of such works as the Aquarian Gospel, but his acceptance of reincarnation, the Great White Brotherhood, and a universalistic embrace of all world religions were largely determined by his Theosophical associations of the early 1920s. His specific descriptions of Atlantis and Lemuria vary in details from those of Theosophical writers but his general context for such description is questions raised by such authors. The final section of the book examines the Indian origins of key elements of Cayce’s elaborate meditation instructions for participants in Search for God groups. They open with a series of hatha yoga stretches and breathing and chanting of Om. This is followed by recital of the Lord’s Prayer which is tied to kundalini awakening and the chakras. This is followed by a period of silent meditation in which one hears the voice of the silence while focusing attention on the pineal gland as the “third eye.” The absorption of yogic influences in the readings bears the imprint of Cayce’s long association with Bhagat Singh Thind, a Punjabi Sikh immigrant to California who wrote several books promoting Surat Shabd Yoga, the set of practices developed by the Radhasoami movement.

This concluding portion of the epilogue to In Search of the Masters describes 1990 research in Paris. The headquarters of the Theosophical Society in France was a beautiful and hospitable place to pursue historical mysteries.

In the 1880s, Paris welcomed many refugees from Jamal ad-Din’s circle of disciples in Egypt. Dalip Singh found a home there from which to plan his return to India. Mikhail Katkov, through his Paris-based disciple Cyon, attempted to influence French policy and public opinion. During the same decade, the Theosophical Society emerged in Paris, attracting much attention from the intelligentsia. Lydia Pashkov’s literary career in Paris began in the 1870s and continued for more than twenty years. My research mission in Paris was to trace the careers of Jamal ad-Din, Sanua, and Pashkov and to seek a French connection to the Dalip Singh conspiracy. I also hoped to uncover more information on Masonic links to T.S. history. But in a trip filled with unexpected findings, my French travels proved no exception. The objectives with which I came to France were not well satisfied; nevertheless, other surprising discoveries made the research an overall success. Theosophical officialdom in the various societies has shown an ambivalent reaction to my research. While few responses have been openly hostile, neither have they been particularly helpful or encouraging– until Paris. At the Theosophical Society headquarters there I was helped in ways which will become apparent in this account of my research progress in France.

The morning of my arrival, the Secretary General of the French Section of the Society showed me to the apartment of my host, the section’s Archivist. While awaiting his return from an appointment, I examined a packet of information gathered for me the Librarian for the T.S. Headquarters. The most striking material he had gathered was from a 1988 French novel, Samarcande, by Amin Maalouf. The writer, of Lebanese origin, had used Jamal ad-Din as a major character in his historical novel about a young American’s quest for a secret manuscript. The protagonist, Benjamin Lesage, is a Marylander in search of an Omar Khayyam text of which he has learned from his cousin, Henri Rochefort. Rochefort is an historical character, a communard exiled in 1871 who later returned and edited a Socialist magazine, l’Intransigeant. In the novel, set in the 1890s, Rochefort directs his American cousin to Jamal ad-Din, who may be able to help locate a copy of the mysterious text.  My interest was keenly aroused within moments of starting to read the chapters the Librarian had copied for me, since it was an obscure text which had led me to Jamal ad-Din in my own quest. He was the first among the Master figures I discovered in my research, and the Chaldean Book of Numbers was my own equivalent of the Omar Khayyam text. In Samarcande, he is first mentioned well into the tale, by Rochefort, who describes their acquaintance:

“He collaborated regularly with the Intransigeant; we met often.  He introduced me to his disciples: Muslims from India, Jews from Egypt, Maronites from Syria. I believe that I was his closest French friend, but certainly not the only one. Ernest Renan and Georges Clemenceau knew him well and, in England, people like Lord” Salisbury, Randolph Churchill and Wilfrid Blunt. Victor Hugo, shortly before he died, met him too.”

The novel is so well grounded in historical research that I didn’t immediately recognize its fictional status. Maalouf has Rochefort read to his cousin from his memoirs the following portrayal of the Persian sage:

“I was introduced to an exile, celebrated throughout Islam as a reformer and revolutionary, the Sheikh Jamal ad-Din, a man with the head of an apostle. His beautiful black eyes, full of sweetness and fire, and his dark brown beard which flowed to his belly, gave him a singular majesty. He represented the type of the dominator of crowds. He barely understood French which he spoke with difficulty, but his intelligence which was always awake made up easily enough for his ignorance of our language. Under his appearance of serene repose, his activity was all-consuming.”

Rochefort continues his account with a description of a visit to Jamal ad-Din’s Paris apartment, filled with books, papers and cigar smoke.  There he was shown the Manuscript of Samarcand, which he describes to his enraptured cousin. Rochefort tells of the Shah’s inviting Jamal ad-Din to Teheran, and the broken promises which led to the rupture between them. Constitution, elections, and restrictions on foreign business were rejected by the same Shah who had earlier agreed to them as a condition of Jamal ad-Din’s support.  Thus, when he felt he had no choice but to rebel, Jamal ad-Din fled to the sanctuary from which he was dragged by the Shah’s soldiers. “That day, in the sanctuary, the Manuscript of Samarcand was lost under the boots of the soldiers of the Shah.”

After  learning of the subsequent adventures of Jamal ad-Din– the tobacco boycott, a brief visit to England, and his final arrival in Constantinople Benjamin Lesage decides to seek out the Master (so named in the text repeatedly) for clues to the Khayyam manuscript. He finds him surrounded by disciples and spies of the Sultan, living in luxury but unable to influence people or events:

“I lived in Paris in one dark room, but it opened onto the wide world. It was a hundred times smaller than this house, but I was less cramped there. I found myself thousands of kilometers from my people, but I worked for their advancement more effectively than I can here or in Persia. My voice was heard from Algiers to Kabul; now, only those can hear me who can honor me with their visit. Of course, they are always welcome, especially if they come from Paris.”

When Lesage tells him that he is American, Jamal ad-Din comments that after he was expelled from India in 1882, he went to America and seriously considered staying. He expresses regret for not having done so, for the Sultan is insane and criminal-­ although the only hope for the Muslims. “I tell you, we Muslims of this century are orphans.” The subject of the Manuscript of Samarcand is introduced, and the Master advises Lesage to go to to his disciple Mirza Reza in Persia for assistance. But while he is there, Mirza Reza assassinates the Shah, and Lesage returns to Jamal ad-Din with the details of his disciple’s fate. The Master is incredulous, horrified, but admits his moral responsibility for the crime. He recalls his words to Mirza Reza which the disciple took as instructions for assassination, but insists that he never intended the result. After telling Lesage that he suffers from cancer of the jaw, he gives him his testament, which appeared in translation in the Intransigeant, the only journal to uphold his innocence:

“I do not suffer from being a prisoner, nor do I fear my approaching death. My only cause for sorrow is knowing that I have not seen the fruit of the seed I have sown. Tyranny continues to crush the peoples of the Orient, and obscurantism stifles their cries for liberty. Perhaps I would have succeeded better had I planted my seeds in the fertile soil of the people instead of the arid soil of royal courts. And you, people of Persia, in whom I have placed my greatest hopes, do not believe that in eliminating one man you can win liberty. It is the weight of age-old traditions that you must dare to shake off.”

Homa Pakdaman’s Djamal ad-Din Assad Abadi dit Afghani reveals the factual basis of almost all aspects of Maalouf’s portrayal of the Master. She confirms his friendships with Henri Rochefort, Ernest Renan, Georges Clemenceau and Wilfrid Blunt. These men were the most influential Western supporters of Jamal ad-Din; at least my efforts to identify others were unavailing. Rochefort’s leftist politics and Journalistic career place him at the center of the milieu in which the most important early French T.S. leaders moved. Louis Dramard and Arthur Arnould were both exiled communards who became involved in Socialist Journalism after their return to France. A letter by HPB cited in Charles Blech’s Contribution a l’Histoire de la Societe Theosophigue en France refers to “M. de Rochefort, whom I highly esteem, but who is not a Theosophist and laughs at us.” By the 1880s, Renan had completed his multi-volume study of Christian origins, of which the Life of Jesus is the best known. His scholarship had dealt a severe blow to the Church, powerfully affecting public opinion in a liberal direction. His extensive travels in the Near East may have brought him into contact with some members of HPB’s network of adept associates.  In a letter to her sister written in the summer of 1884, Mme. Blavatsky mentioned him among those who regularly attended meetings of the Societe Theosophique d’Orient et d’Occident at the home of Lady Caithness: “You shall see there the elite of Parisian society and intelligentsia. Renan, Flammarion, Madame Adam, and lots of the aristocracy from the Faubourg St. Germain.” Another reference to Renan is found in Felix K. Gaboriau’s farewell to readers of le Lotus written upon his resignation as editor in March 1889.

Georges Clemenceau, born in 1841, entered politics as mayor of Montmartre. From 1876 to 1885 he served as a deputy from Paris. Representing the extreme left, he wielded great influence, overturning three cabinets in 1882, 1885 and 1886. In 1887 he obliged the President to resign.  During Jamal ad-Din’s stay in Paris, Clemenceau was director of La Justice. Later he was publisher of l’Aurore, which became a leading voice of the Dreyfusards. In 1906 and again during the World War he was President of the Conseil (the Third Republic’s most powerful post), but failed in his effort to become President of the Republic after the war.

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, the sole English disciple of Jamal ad-Din, was a convert to Islam who maintained a sympathetic interest in Indian, Irish and Egyptian struggles against the British empire. His skill as a poet and writer and his string of romantic conquests make him one of the more colorful figures of the late Victorian era. As a Member of Parliament, he was spokesman for many unpopular causes.

aPakdaman’s study, an adaptation of her dissertation, exposes several previously unknown facts about Jamal ad-Din. He was in Bombay for a month in the spring of 1869 before he went to Cairo, which coincides with one period of HPB’s presence in India. In Alexandria, his disciples published a journal in Arabic and French entitled Jeune Egypt which suggests a Mazzinian inspiration. When Jamal ad-Din arrived in Paris, Sanua published a notice in his paper calling him “our Master,” while Rochefort’s l’Intransigeant and Clemenceau’s La Justice also announced his arrival.

Maalouf’s wording of Rochefort’s description of Jamal ad-Din’s physical appearance is taken directly from the journalist’s memoirs, as I discovered by reading Pakdaman. She also confirms that Rochefort’s journal was the only one to defend Jamal ad-Din in the case of the Shah’s assassination. While the tale of the Master’s trip to America seems unfounded, Pakdaman turned out to be the source of Maalouf’s version of Jamal ad-Din’s death. She suggests that he was murdered by the Sultan’s doctor, based on accounts of two historians, one of whom cites two eyewitnesses. And finally, the passage in which the Master laments having sown his seed in the arid soil of royal courts is found in Pakdaman’s book, taken from Jamal ad-Din’s last letter to a Persian friend.

I arrived at the Bibliotheque Nationale on a Friday, only to discover that Saturday would be the last chance to use the library before its three week annual closing. This caused me to cut my projected month in France in half. The Maalouf and Pakdaman books were the only French sources on Jamal ad-Din I found; with only one day remaining I turned to James Sanua and Lydia Pashkov for additional clues. Examination of the first fifteen years of Sanua’s Abou Naddara took up less time than anticipated since only ten per cent of its contents were in French, the rest Arabic. It focused almost entirely on contemporary Egyptian politics, offering very little of Theosophical interest. Sanua’s Masonic connections also remained obscure. It was noted in July 1885 that he spoke to an unnamed lodge on the Mahdi. The only noteworthy finds in Abou Naddara appeared in 1887. A speech to “the glorious memory of Garibaldi” was listed among the $heikh’s activities for that year, but far more intriguing was another paean to one of HPB’s mentors. In September 1887, under the heading “to the Katkov family,” he wrote:

“In the name of the Egyptian National Party and the Indian Muslims of whom my journal Abou Naddara is the organ, I associate myself with the French press to render a supreme homage to the memory of Katkov, illustrious publicist, who sympathized heartily with the sufferings of my compatriots and whose writings so powerfully contributed to make Russia as well as France reJect the disastrous convention destined to deliver Egypt definitively to England.

May Allah, clement and merciful, deign to pour out on the widow and children of Katkov his ineffable consolations and accord to the soul of the defunct peace eternal.”

This is the first evidence of any link between Sanua and Katkov, although their mutual acquaintance Jamal ad-Din made such a link probable. In the private library of the T.S. Archivist, I found two letters from HPB to her sister which also show esteem for Katkov. In the first, written in Paris in 1884, she assures Vera of his interest in her work:

“What is money?  Le it be switched!  Katkoff is bombarding me with telegrams. One of them was sent to me here by post from Madras. Twenty-nine words! I expect it cost him at least 500 francs, and when I wrote to him from here he sent another asking for my articles. He must be wanting them badly if he asks for them at such cost. So we shall have money.”

In 1886, HPB wrote from Germany that she was sending Katkov a subscription to le Lotus (Journal of the French T.S.), adding:

“I simply adore Katkoff for his patriotism.  I do not mind his not sending me any money again, God bless his soul. I deeply respect him, because he is a patriot and a brave man speaking the truth at whatever cost! Such articles as his are a credit to Russia.  I am sure that if darling uncle were still living he would find an echo of his own thoughts in them…Oh, if only the Regents were hanged in Bulgaria and Germany checkmated, I should die in peace.”

Here, as in so many other instances, HPB’s Russian writings reveal vastly more of her true self than she wanted her English-speaking Theosophists to see.                                        

After returning from a trip to Aix-en-Provence described in Book II’s epilogue, I found two previously overlooked passages of interest in the same private library, which contained a full run of ‘Boris de Zirkoff’s magazine Theosophia. In Manly P. Hall’s “Mme. Blavatsky– A Tribute,” a private letter written by HPB in 1890 is cited. It refers to Olcott having met two Masters personally, “one in Bombay and the other in Cashmere.” Since Olcott claims considerably more such encounters, for example with K.H. at Lahore, this reference is a bit confusing. What is remarkable about it, however, is that Olcott never really went to Kashmir proper, but only to Jammu.  By his own account of his trip there, he met no Master at all– spending all his time in the company of the Maharaja Ranbir Singh. So here, at the end of the research trail, was .yet another clue to the identity of the Master M.  In Bombay, Olcott may well have met Jamal ad-Din or the mysterious Greek Hilarion.  The other find in Theosophia was an article by Mary K. .Neff referring to a clipping in HPB’s scrapbook, now in the Adyar archives.  It consists of an article by Herbert Monachesi, one of the T.S. founders, written for the New York Sunday Mercury of October 6, 1875. This was in the midst of the birth of the Society, and is one of the very few clues to Monachesi’s interests at the time.  The article, “Proselyters from India,” states that in 1870, Moolji Thackersey and Tulsidas Jadarjee went to America as missionaries, sent there by unnamed superiors. “Strangely enough, Col. Olcott crossed the Atlantic on the same ship with them.” If this is reliable, it points to further avenues of research into Theosophical origins. The “accidental” nature of Thackersey’s role in T.S. history is extremely suspect; it was he who suggested the formation of the Arya Samaj and later its amalgamation with the T.S. But this elusive personage carried most of his secrets to the grave, and with them all opportunity to fully unravel the mystery of the Mahatmas.

At the beginning of the book I reflected on the endlessness of HPB’s quest or that of any sincere seeker. At its conclusion, it is tempting to try to summarize, synthesize, and explain the significance of all that has gone before. But such an enterprise would be premature, and I feel quite unqualified to attempt it. Dharma gates beyond measure stand open to investigators of Theosophical history. May this book herald the 1991 centenary of Mme. Blavatsky’s death as the beginning of a new understanding of her life. 

[This is the last excerpt about Indian research from In Search of the Masters. At the end in Pondicherry we arrive at a twentieth century contemporary of Elbert.] KPJ

On the 49-hour train ride south to Madras, there was ample opportunity to reflect on where I’d been and what might lie ahead. My reading for the trip was V.P. Varma’s Political Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo. This seemed relevant to my quest for the historical Masters for several reasons. Aurobindo Ghosh had attained fame as a leader of the extremist wing of the Freedom Movement before he was imprisoned in 1908, suspected of involvement in a bomb plot. In prison, he experienced a radical transformation of outlook, and emerged as a yogi who had renounced politics. Even so, in 1910 he was obliged to flee to Pondicherry and French protection, in fear of another imprisonment. There he spent the remaining 40 years of his life, evolving an elaborate interpretation of Hindu philosophy and religion. Pondicherry was among my destinations in South India, more importantly as the site of Thakar Singh’s death than for reasons associated with Aurobindo. But while I felt strongly drawn to Pondicherry as a possible source of clues in my quest, the main objective of the southern half of my trip was the Adyar Library and Research Centre.

Having begun my journey at the meeting place of Blavatsky and Olcott, I felt a sense of closure in approaching Adyar. There was Olcott’s final resting place, the Headquarters of the Theosophical Society since 1882, and the greatest single research facility for T.S. history. Although most of my years as a Theosophist were spent as a member of the independent T.S. based in Pasadena, I had always hoped to make a pilgrimage to Adyar. Within an hour of my arrival, I met Rudi Jansma, a Dutch Theosophist of the Pasadena society doing research in the Adyar Library. He informed me of the presence of Joy Dixon, whose discussion of the Hodgson report is included in the last chapter. Her doctoral research was on T.S. influence on English culture from 1890 to 1930. The day after my arrival; Nancy Anderson of Loyola University–New Orleans arrived to pursue research for a biography of Annie Besant. Only a few other visitors were present– Dutch, Australian, Finnish, French– so the 250 acres of tropical forest and the half-mile of adjacent beach provided many opportunities for solitary reflection. The friendly and efficient staff and the relaxed pace made the T.S. an ideal retreat from the constant stress of Indian travel.

The first objective of my Adyar research was a review of the early years of The Theosophist. As the official magazine of the T.S., it was the most likely source for clues about the characters I had hypothesized as the Mahatmas and their disciples. But even in my most hopeful moments I had not imagined the extent of proof which would be found in the Adyar Library.  The first unexpected find was an article by Alexander Wilder, listed as a Vice-President of the T.S.  for the U.S.

Wilder was among the Founders’ intimate friends in New York, where he had contributed the “Before the Veil”” section of Isis Unveiled and helped in other ways during its production. His name did not emerge in my earlier research on Rosicrucian influences behind the founding of the T.S. as reported in Book I. But in “The Brethren of the Rosy Cross,” written for the February 1880 Theosophist, he strongly hinted at his status among the Rosicrucian adepts who secretly sponsored the Society:

“When Cagliostro/Balsamo was immured in a Roman dungeon, to be tortured and murdered, it was fondly imagined that the Golden Secret would be disclosed.  The hope was illusory. It could be communicated to none except those who were able to successfully comprehend it…A preparatory discipline was necessary for this purpose: and whoever accomplished that successfully, would certainly never betray it. If such a one could entertain the impossible idea of doing such a thing, the treasure would certainly be found not to be in his possession.

So the Rosicrucian philosophers have lived in every age. They have jostled others in the church or at the market place, yet without being recognized. They are numerous enough now, to constitute the salt of the eartn. They always have maintained their existence, and each of the Brotherhood knows infallibly every member of the fraternity. Their existence may be a myth, yet it is not.  The parable is for those who can comprehend it. ‘None of the wicked will understand, but the wise will understand,’ said the prophet Daniel.”

This seems to be the last appearance of Wilder in any T.S. publication. Later in the year, the Rosicrucian adepts would be completely supplanted by the Himalayan Mahatmas as Blavatsky’s alleged Masters. Wilder, like Sotheran and Rawson, would become irrelevant to the mission of the T.S. Fortunately for the historical record, his claims about the Brothers of the Rosy Cross appeared just before they were to be replaced by other Masters.

In September 1880, a notice appeared to the effect that “David E. Dudley, Esq., M.D.·, an American physician and surgeon of ability and learning, and a Councillor of the Theosophical Society…has recently taken up his resldence in Bombay.” Dudley was among the witnesses to HPB’s Indian travels cited in 1878 by Rawson, but this is the first evidence of his T.S. membership I discovered. Another character from previous researches appears semi-unexpectedly as a Theosophist in the February 1881 issue, which lists “Jowahir Singh, Punjab” as a subscriber. This Arya Samaj member was presumably part of the “Punjab T.S.” in Lahore which had been announced in the previous month: “…at the former capital of the late lion-hearted Runjeet Singh, a branch was recently organized by Sikhs and Punjabis…” A note in the May 1881 supplement states that Arya Samaj members were hosts of the Founders on a trip to Lahore and Amritsar.  It should be recalled that Bhai Jawahir Singh was the young Sikh most responsible. for the success of the Arya Samaj in the PunJab. Secretary of the Lahore Arya Samaj and the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College fund committee, he drew other young Sikhs under Dayanand’s influence. But he was also among those who resigned from the Arya Samaj in 1888 due to the anti-Sikh fanaticism expressed by its Hindu leaders. In 1883 he supported Bhai Gurmukh Singh in starting the first Khalsa press.  In his T.S. affiliation I found yet another link in the network of Punjabi Sikhs which included the Master K.H.

In March 1882, a correspondent from Lahore wrote about a meeting held the previous month in Rawalpindi at the home of Sirdar Nihal Singh, on the subject “What SamaJees are Needed in Aryavarta?”‘  The speaker, Pandit Gopi Nath, denounced the Aryas and Brahmos for creating sectarian hatred, concluding that “most needed in Aryavarta are those which make it incumbent upon themselves to preach the cause of UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD and try to create union in the country instead of sectarian strife and ‘disunion.”  This shows clearly that Sikhs and Theosophists were united in opposing the sectarian direction of Swami Dayanand and his followers.

Although the first three years of The Theosophist provided a series of unexpected and intriguing pieces of evidence, the most convincing proof that I was on the right track was in the volumes for 1883 and 1884.  Ranbir Singh’s first appearance in its pages is found in the May 1883 supplement. The article concerns the visit of the Aryan Patriotic Association to Jammu, and reveals much about the links between Ranbir Singh and the T.S.:

“Rao Bishen Lal, F.T.S., Pundit of Bareilly, who arrived in Jummu on the 7th instant. waited upon His Highness the MaharaJa on Saturday evening last,at the temple of Rugo Nath Das [Raghunath], and, we are glad to hear, that His Highness took so much interest in the deputation that he was pleased to invite all the members at once to a private interview which lasted for an hour and a half, among those present being the Heir apparent and the Princes. Dewan Anant Ram, Prime Master [Minister?], and Pundit Ganesh Chowbey, spoke highly about Pundit Bishen Sahai’s attainments, and as being one of the leading men in India devoted to the interests of the country, and His Highness, in order to signify the pleasure he felt in meeting the deputation– especially D. Nath Bawaji– offered the latter gentleman a seat higher than his own on account of his proficiency in the occult sciences. His Highness promised to co-operate heartily with all patriotic schemes tending toward the re-establishment of Aryavarta’s ancient glory. The Princes were then introduced; after which ceremony His Highness, we are further informed, intends paying the deputation a return visit in some apartments close to the Palace, to which place His Highness desired them to remove from their lodgings in the European quarters.”

Dharbagiri Nath, called Bawaji, was among the most elevated of the Masters’ alleged chelas in the Theosophical Society. Ranbir Singh’s gesture of sitting in a lower position than he recalls his identical behavior with Olcott, and suggests a paradoxical modesty indeed. The Maharaja’s invitation of the delegation into apartments near the palace also foreshadowed his behavior with Olcott and Damodar. It would be interesting to know the contents of the long interview he granted the group, but one can surmise that  it  involved “patriotic schemes tending  toward  the re-establishment of Aryavarta’s ancient glory.” The patriotic group proceeded next to Lahore, where they sought support of the native chiefs for educa•tional and publishing projects in the region. I would wager that among their hosts in Lahore were some members of the Mahatmic network previously identified in my research.  But this was a quest for truth, not mere further speculation, and that did not appear until the January 1884 supplement.

In the previous month, December 1883, and in a special issue dated December 1883/January 1884, a vast amount of fraudulent testimony about the Masters appeared, as described in the previous chapter. What I did not realize until reviewing these issues was the elaborateness of the deception. Numerous witnesses appear whose existence is otherwise unknown. “‘Rama Sourindo Gargya Deva”‘ of Darjeeling is one whose existence was questioned by Hodgson, but several equally dubious personages are cited. Ten-dub Ughien, called by HPB “‘the lama next to our Mahatma– and the chief and guide of his chelas on their travels,” was supposedly K.H.’s companion on a trip to Lake Manosavara, where they were seen by a “‘disinterested witness.”‘ The previously cited tale of Tibetan Koothumpas by Mohini Chatterji appears in the December issue, as does Damodar’s article “A Great Riddle Solved,”‘ citing witnesses to K.H. in Tibet. All this appears calculated as a blind in the sense that readers were to be rendered blind to the implications of genuine testimony in the very next issue. The January 1884 supplement describes the arrival of Olcott, Damodar and Brown in Lahore on the previous November 18. “His Highness Raja Harbans Singh and other Sirdars [my emphasis] sent their conveyances to bring the party to their quarters”‘– these quarters being the maidan outside the city where K.H. and Djual Kul visited their tents on the 19th and 20th.(49) Among those who came to welcome the party at a special reception on the night of the 18th were “Sirdar Dayal Singh Majethia (Reis and Jagirdar of Amritsar),” ”Bhai Gurmukh Singh, President, ‘Guru Singh Sabha’ (of the Sikhs),” and “Sheikh Wahabuddin, Commissioner, deputed by H.H. the Maharaja of Kashmir.” The latter gentleman escorted the Theosophists to Jammu, where they arrived on November 22. Later in the same supplement, a financial report provides the information that Ranbir Singh donated 2500 rupees for travel expenses, and the Maharaja of Holkar gave 200. In light of Murphet’s statement that previous travel expenses were paid by the Masters, and HPB’s mysterious references to Holkar and “‘Some One,” this is suggestive indeed. But far more important are the references to “‘other Sirdars,”‘ and to Dayal Singh Majithia and Bhai Gurmukh Singh. The latter, Thakar Singh’s most trusted partner in the Singh Sabha, was thus associated with Olcott’s visits to Lahore in 1883 and in 1896, as recounted in chapter 2. The lack of any mention of Thakar Singh’s name seems inevitable if he was indeed the Master K.H., but the reference to “other Sirdars”‘ probably includes him, particularly since Bhai Gurmukh Singh was present. As for Dayal Singh Majithia, his association with Surendra Nath Banerjea and the Indian Association led me to consider, in chapter 2 of Book III, that he might be an alternate candidate for K.H. His Brahmo Samaj membership argued against this, however, and the public mention of his name in 1883 makes it even less likely. In Chapter 2 of Book IV he appears among the financial and spiritual sponsors of the Dalip Singh conspiracy. His presence during these crucial days in Lahore suggests that he was the basis of Djual Kul, whose name is even quite similar to his. Sirdar Dayal Singh Majithia’s status as a journalist, educational philanthropist and Indian nationalist all link him with the concerns of the previously identified Mahatmas. The case for this identification was strengthened by the discovery that he and Banerjea were both present at the 1884 annual convention of the T.S., at which “‘the first program of the Indian National Congress was drafted and its organization sketched out.”

This information is found in Sven Eek’s Damodar and the pioneers of The Theosophical Movement.  The circumstances of this meeting are explained in Murphet’s biography of Olcott, in which Dr. Kewal Motwani is quoted as saying:

“As a result of his fervent appeal to the patriotic instincts of the people, seventeen of those present at the annual Convention of the T.S., 1884, formed the Indian’ National Union, changed to the Indian National Congress the following year, ‘to serve the Motherland.’ Strictly speaking, Olcott was the Father of the Indian National Congress, although the title was given to Mr. A.O. Hume…”

It was indeed Hume who actually organized the Congress, although the groundwork was laid by Banerjea, Dayal Singh Majithia and others inspired by Olcott.

The crucial factor in the evidence found in the January 1884 supplement to The Theosophist is the triangular link it shows. Olcott and Damodar are seen first in the company of Punjabi Sikh Sirdars and Singh Sabha members, after which they proceed to Jammu and the court of Ranbir Singh. That this configuration of influences coincides with the most dramatic Mahatmic encounters in Theosophical history can hardly be accidental. Any possibility of mere coincidence is reduced to insignificance by the next source I encountered, HPB’s The Durbar in Lahore.

Mikhail Katkov published this work as part of the same series as Caves and Jungles of Hindustan.  It is quite distinct from the larger work, however, due to its status as a journalistic account of an historic event. Apparently a purely non-fiction work, it describes the trip to the Punjab taken by the Founders in the fall of 1880. This is crucial to the question of the identities of M. and K.H. as can be seen by a review of chronology. In late August, HPB, Olcott and their servant Babula left Bombay for Meerut, where they visited with Swami Dayanand. They then headed to Simla, where they arrived on September 8. Until the Founders’ departure for Amritsar on October 21, HPB provided the Simla Theosophists with a non-stop program of paranormal phenomena, all attributed to K.H. Among the highlights were September 29, when Mrs. Sinnett received a note from K.H., found high up in the branches of a tree. On October 3, the Masters materialized a cup and saucer for an unexpected picnic guest in the morning, then produced a missing brooch for Mrs. Hume at supper. Sometime in early October, Sinnett wrote to K.H. via HPB, sending a second letter before a reply to the first arrived. On the 16th, Hume sent his first letter to K.H., and Alice Gordon’s handkerchief was mysteriously duplicated by Mme. Blavatsky, claiming Mahatmic assistance.

Sinnett received his replies on the 18th and 19th, and on the 20th the Masters materialized a note and another brooch inside a pillow belonging to Mrs. Sinnett. The next day the Founders left Simla, having thoroughly captivated the Humes, Sinnetts and Gordons by these magical performances. It is entirely beyond the scope of this inquiry to evaluate the reality of these phenomena; my own guess is that they were a combination of fraud and genuine psychism, done without the aid of the Masters, although with their foreknowledge and approval.

The Founders stayed at. Amritsar from October 23 to No.vember 3, during which period another alleged paranormal communication occurred. Sinnett wrote to K.H. via HPB, who transmitted its contents telepathically to its intended recipient, allegedly thirty miles beyond Rawalpindi at the time. A telegram response from Jhelum reached Sinnett the same day, but on the 29th, K.H. wrote him a letter from Amritsar. On the 1st of November, K.H. replied to Hume’s first letter, again from Amritsar. On the 3rd, the Founders proceeded to Lahore for the Durbar.

With this background in mind,, the revelations of HPB’s Russian account of the trip are easier to discern. On the first page of her tale, she refers to Ranbir Singh as being “constantly suspected of Russian intrigues,” and being summoned to meet the new Viceroy along with Punjab rajas “who since 1849 had not yet become accustomed to British domination and were often forgetful of it.” Before she describes the durbar itself, HPB gives a lengthy account of her visit to Amritsar. Upon the Founders’ arrival, the platform was crowded with 200 Aryas and Sikhs. “Mulraj–Singh, President of the local Arya Samaj and a very wealthy Sikh,” held a reception for them in his home. After a detailed description of Amritsar, the Golden Temple, and Sikhism, she comments:

“Their esteem for Nanak is so great that even now they almost deify a certain Baba Khein-Singh, Just because he is the 16th direct descendant of the founder of Sikhism. This disgusting Baba (father) leads a parasitical existence in Rawalpindi, surrounded by the veneration of thousands who bring him, as voluntary offerings, over 2 lakhs of rupees (200 thousand) per year.  Contrary to custom and even the law of the Sikhs, this holy man has, besides his wife, a whole harem; as for the offerings of his zealous but far from rational worshippers, he spends them in the company of English functionaries, residents and collectors, in crazy festivities, hunting and drunken orgies.”

K.H. appears in the name given him for Russian readers in the next passage: “Hardly had we arrived in the Temple-yard, when ?

When we reached the large square from which there is a descent to the lake, we found the whole left side of the stand occupied by the chairs of the English, behind which the rajas and sardars thronged reverently. We did not go there but went straight into the court of the temple where Ram-Das awaited us, and he led us to the MaharaJa of Faridkot, who had sent orders from Simla to have comfortable seats prepared for us there.                        

At this point it should be recalled that the Raja of Faridkot (not Maharaja, as HPB has it) was a Singh Sabha member and the most faithful of the firm supporters of Thakar Singh in the Dalip Singh plot a few years later. Another evidence for Thakar Singh’s identity as Ram-Das and K.H. is the mention of sirdars present at the ceremony. Even more significant is the great length at which HPB praises Dalip Singh’s mother as a heroine:

The chief wife, adored by RanJit-Singh, Rani (Queen) Jindan, renounced the bliss of the suttee through her love for her son, and remained in this vale of tears to fight for him and defend his filial right to the throne. Sadly did this woman, famous in the contemporary history of England’s conquests, end her days. The son she loved so well was the first to enter into an agreement with her enemies against her, driven by cowardice and greed to betray his mother and his country. He still thrives, has grown fat, and while spending the greater part of the year on his estate in England, Elveden Hall…indulges his passion for hunting and maintains the appearance of a regular English country squire. As for the Rani, she lived and suffered for many years in lonely exile, in an obscure corner of Kensington, where she spent her remaining days, until the final liberation of death, secluded in her room with the faithful woman servant who followed her from India.”

The intensity with which HPB discusses the life of Rani Jindan seems evidence of some personal acquaintance with the tragedy. The outrage she expresses at Dalip Singh’s accommodation to English life seems to foreshadow his later about-face. In further explanation of the Rani’s heroism, HPB describes her role as a leader and fighter in the last Sikh war. After being imprisoned, she escaped to Nepal, but was tricked by the East India company into coming to a border town to meet Dalip. He had actually long since converted and gone to Scotland, but she did not learn of this until after her capture by the British and deportation to England:

“…the faith of the destroyers of her people and her country,” she said. She almost died of grief. Later the devoted mother often expressed her sorrow in bitter regret that she had not voluntarily offered her body to burn over her husband’s funeral pyre.  “I ignored the sacred custom,” she said, “and renounced the bliss of becoming a sati, and the gods have punished me for it!” She died in Kensington (London), refusing to live or to eat with her son, and even to touch him or her grandchildren.

The significance of these passages lies not merely in strengthening the supposition that Thakar Singh was K.H./Ram-Das, but also in their publication by Katkov, who a few years later invited Dalip to Moscow. HPB clearly got the inside story of the Sandhanwalia family history from someone who bitterly resented Dalip’s conversion to Christianity. The mostly likely source of this information, particularly in light of its context of the presence of Ram-Das, was Thakar Singh/Koot Hoomi, who succeeded in leading his cousin back to Sikhism five years later.

The most valuable feature of The Durbar in Lahore is its detailed descriptions of Ranbir and his entourage… No other ruler’s camp is described in one tenth the detail provided here. This is evidence at the very least of the Founders’ acquaintance with Ranbir Singh– for at whose authority could they have been allowed into the inner sanctum of his tent? The presence of Ram-Das/K.H. as their tour guide in Lahore, as in Amritsar, suggests that it was in his company that they visited Ranbir’s camp. Three years later, almost to the day, K.H. was to again appear in Ranbir’s court, to spirit off Damodar to an ashram.  And finally, while Ram-Das appears under the same name as in Caves and Jungles, his friend the Hindu Gulab-Singh from that series is nowhere to be found in The Durbar in Lahore. This would seem to be due to the same person’s presence in this narrative under his real name of Ranbir Singh.

The conclusion of the tale focuses on rumors which began circulating among the British due to Ranbir’s failure to appear in the viceregal procession.    All sorts of explanations are put forth, most based on theories about Russian intrigues. HPB offers no comment on any of this.  Finally, the great durbar begins, with the princes seated by rank, Ranbir Singh closest to the Viceroy’s throne. While people around her speculate on how he may be punished for missing the procession, HPB describes him: “The hero of all these discussions, in the meantime, sat immovable, somewhat pale but quite calm.  On his dark, bronzed face two large, almost black, circles were visible under   his   eyes, and occasionally he     shrank   almost imperceptibly and trembled slightly as though he were cold.

But even his trembling could be detected rather by the rustling of the high diamond aigrette on his turban than by his impassive features. The Maharaja’s boldly dyed whiskers curled as bravely as ever, and his eyes, black as coals, gazed more lazily around, but no more morosely than usual; he looked through half-lowered lids more as though he were ill than perturbed.

-Then follows an account of a long and silly ceremony in which the princes all make obeisance and give gifts to the Viceroy and then all receive gifts in return. “The magnificent Ranbir Singh” receives a gift worth Rs. 50,000 from the Empress. He leaves hastily at the end of the ceremony, prompting further speculations about his intent to be rude. Finally, when pressed, one of his courtiers admits that he had taken a laxative that morning on instruction of the most learned doctor of Kashmir. HPB concludes:

In this simple way, prosaically and unexpectedly, the formidable cloud that had hung suspended over the political horizon was dissolved, solving the mystery that had stunned the Anglo-Indian colony, the mystery of the ‘Russian intrigues’ and the ‘unprecedented’ impertinence resulting from it, displayed by the Maharaja of Kashmir.”

There were two points in the history of the T.S. at which the Masters Morya and Koot Hoomi appeared as solid historical personag.es rather than elusive semi-ethereal beings. At both of these points, the same triangular configuration is found. The Founders of the T.S., the MaharaJa Ranbir Singh, and an Amritsar Sikh Sirdar are found working in collusion. In October and November 1880, the Founders’ trip to the Punjab to meet these figures coincided with the beginning of the Mahatma correspondence. Three years later, Olcott, Damodar and Brown made another trip to the Punjab and then proceeded to Jammu. This second journey to the Masters coincided with an elaborate effort to prove their existence, combining false testimony with true in order to preserve the secret. The information I found in the pages of The Theosophist at the Adyar Library was sufficient to remove my remaining doubts about the identities of Morya and Koot Hoomi….

One further reference to Ranbir Singh is found in Eek’s Damodar and the Pioneers of the Theosophical Movement. In a letter to The Epiphany, dated February 16, 1884, Damodar responded to critics of his alleged trip from Jammu to the Masters’ ashram by saying “As regards my flying to Tibet and coming back within two days’… on my return to Jammoo, I distinctly told the enquirers there that I had gone to a place within His Highness’ Dominion, but that for certain reasons I could not give its name or exact locality.”

After these immensely satisfying discoveries, the rest of my stay in India was anti-climactic. In four days in Pondicherry, I visited the Aurobindo ashram, various ashram–operated businesses, and Auroville, “city of the future.” While Pondy was the cleanest and most charming city I saw in India, the ashram atmosphere was of a cloying Bhakti piety, and I was glad to return to Madras. The memory of Thakar Singh’s martyrdom in Pondicherry was a constant source of sadness during my stay. Suffering through the worst case of food poisoning of my life, I tried to accept it as a means of reliving the agony in which he died. But I had gone to Pondy filled with hopes of discovering something of importance there, and this eluded me completely. The significance of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother was not to be revealed to me until I arrived in France, as reported in the epilogue to Book II.

A day after my return to Madras, I was astounded to find the following article in Indian Express:

“New Delhi, April 7 (PTI) Over 50 Sikhs under the banner of ‘Delhi Sri Guru Singh Sabha’ took out a procession from Tilak Bridge to India Gate in the capital on Saturday to protest killings in the Batala and Panipat bomb blasts.

The protestors who wore black bands also observed a two-minute silence in memory of those killed in the terrorist violence.”

The Batala blast was a Sikh terrorist attack on a Hindu religious procession, which killed 36 persons and injured 78 on April 3. The Panipat attack on a public bus in Haryana caused lZ deaths and 31 injuries.  The Akali Dal factions which dominate Punjabi politics tacitly support such terrorist violence’. Every source on Punjab history had reported that the Singh Sabha became extinct in the 1920s due to the rise of the Akali Dal. So in the midst of the horror, here was one bright spot. Not only were 50 Sikhs brave enough to publicly denounce Sikh terrorism against Hindus, which in itself was unprecedented. More amazingly, the organization founded in 1873 by Thakar Singh Sandhanwalia is not extinct after all, and is speaking out for brotherhood exactly as he would have wished. A small spark of light in a sea of darkness, perhaps. ‘ But even so, after spending days contemplating the martyrdom of Thakar Singh, my spirits were lifted by this completely unexpected news.

My last ten days in India were spent mostly reading at the Broadlands Hotel, a rambling three-story former harem in Madras. All my library research objectives were met, and archives access was denied me by the President of the Society.  So I devoted my nergies to fiction, finding in Kim an eerily familiar portrayal of late 19th century Indian politics. Widely recognized as Kipling’s greatest work, Kim tells of the adventures of a young Irish orphan growing up in the streets of Lahore.  Reared by the Indian proprietress of an opium den, Kim becomes half-Indianised, speaking Urdu and English with equal facility. He goes on a quest across North India with an old Tibetan lama in search of a sacred river, and this quest gives the novel its main story line. But in his travels, Kim is used by an Afghan horse trader as a courier for British intelligence. The message he delivers to Colonel Creighton of Umballa is an impersonal, unaddressed statement, with five microscopical pinholes in one corner, that most scandalously betrayed the five confederated kings, the sympathetic Northern Power, a Hindu banker in Pashawar, a firm of gun-makers in Belgium, and an important semi-independent Mohammedan ruler to the South.” The plot, so reminiscent of the Dalip Singh conspiracy, is foiled, and later Kim is recognized as a Sahib, educated in·an .English school, and trained to become a “chain-man,” or spy in the Great Ga.me. At the end of his quest, Kim is ready to begin his career. in service to the Empire. For its vivid evocation of Indian life, and its verisimilitude to the politics of the period, Kim is excellent reading for anyone drawn to the mystery of the Masters.  But it is unarguably a tale told from the opposite side. In the late 1980s; T.N. Murari wrote two sequels which are based on political values completely opposed to Kipling’s. In The Imperial Agent, the young adult Kim grows gradually disenchanted with his role in service to the British.  His sense of Indianness wins out over his identification with the Sahibs. In The Last Victory, Kim becomes acquainted with such leaders of the Freedom Movement as Mohandas Gandhi, Annie Besant and Jawaharlal Nehru. He dies a martyr of Indian nationalism.

My trip to India, which included discovery of a vast treasury of useful facts, thus ended with absorption in fiction as I tried to come to an intuitive understanding of the human drama of the Mahatmas. The role of fiction in portraying history is of great importance; most of our imaginative acquaintance with history comes from films and novels. As a librarian, I tend to think  in  terms of a neat division between fiction  and non-fiction. As a Theosophist, I feel disillusionment in discovering how fictional was HPB’s portrayal of her Masters. But on reflection, after reading Kim, I realized that the relationship between fiction and truth is not one of simple opposition. My own path of discovery was based on a particle theory of truth– the accumulation of verified facts as a means of attaining an accurate understanding of history. But even after all these facts were collected, I remained at a loss to explain the deeper meaning of it all. Blavatsky made liberal use of untruths in her effort to convey truth as seen according to a wave theory– coherence rather than correspondence being the ultimate value. Regardless of her inaccuracies in details, she did succeed in presenting a more coherent rendition of the crucial issues of East-West relations than any other Westerner of her time.

India’s capital provided a unique opportunity to trace the course of 19th century history as a prelude to the freedom movement which led to independence. The first night in Delhi, my friends and I went to the sound and light show at the Red Fort. This magnificent spectacle sweeps through 400 years of history, culminating in national independence in 1947. The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 was particularly emphasized, as the Mogul Emperor of the time lived at the Red Fort. Throughout my stay in Delhi, I was surrounded by symbols of the greatness of the Indian nation. Far more than Bombay, Delhi gives the Western observer a sense of hope for India’s future. It is a clean, hard-working, orderly city in which the beggars and con men of Bombay seem a million miles away. In Bombay, I was surrounded by reminders of the­ colonial past.  Since my goal was to retrace the steps of the T.S. Founders, this was an appropriate starting point. But in Delhi I was confronted continually by symbols of India’s pre-colonial past and its future as a great independent nation. Faith in India’s future was the motivating factor for the Mahatmas’ sponsorship of the Theosophical Society. In Delhi I began to see their lives in context of inevitable progression toward the national destiny.

Although my hypotheses have been rejected by one Theosophical publisher as providing an “all-physical” solution to the mystery of the Masters, the evolution of a nation is ultimately a spiritual process. The exhibitions in the Nehru Museum lead one through this process as it is seen in the life of one man. ,Jawaharlal Nehru, who met Annie Besant when he was 13 and joined the T.S. immediately, was the first leader of free India.  His descendants have governed the nation for almost all the years since his death, but shortly before my arrival Rajiv Gandhi lost his bid for reelection. Nehru’s father, Motilal, was also a Theosophist, and Mohandas Gandhi’s link with the T.S. was a crucial element in his awakening as a leader. In his student years he visited the T.S. in London, met HPB, and first read the Bhagavad Gita there in a Theosophical translation into English. The roles of Annie Besant and Mahatma Gandhi in the Indian freedom movement are well documented in the Nehru Museum.  Thus my researches in the adjacent Nehru Library were carried out amid many reminders of the Theosophical contribution to India’s destiny.

The  Kashmir State:  A  Biography of MaharaJa Gulab  Singh 1792–1858, by K.K. Panikkar, I learned that Ranbir’s mother was a Rukwal Rajput married in 1809.(19) Unfortunately, the origin of the Rukwal tribe was nowhere to be found.                                ‘

Arva Samaj in the Freedom Movement: 1875–1918 by K.C. Yadav and K.S. Arya reveals the deep involvement of Swami Dayanand’s followers in nationalistic agitation. Part 2, “Eminent Arya Freedom Fighters,” .includes a portrait of Shyamji Krishnavarma, the brilliant scholar and leader of the Bombay Samaj who remained loyal to the T.S. Born in 1857 to a Brahmin family in Kutch, he was educated in his home town of Mandavi before completing high school in Bombay.  There he took a prize in Sanskrit, which was an omen of his future career. In 1875 he married a rich merchant’s daughter, and shortly thereafter was involved in the founding of the Arya Samaj in Bombay. In 1877-78 he did a propaganda tour through Western India for Swami Dayanand. After being introduced to the English Sanskritist Professor Monier Williams, he went to England in April 1879 at his invitation. He completed a B.A. in 1883, returned home to India and was Diwan at Ratalam for several years. In 1888 he became a lawyer at Ajmer, and later pursued this career at Udaipur. In 1895 he was dismissed from the position of Diwan in Junagarh, for reasons involving a conspiracy of British local officials. Krishnavarma returned to London in 1897, and two years later he became politically active on behalf of the Boers. In January 1905 he founded The Indian Sociologist, an “organ of freedom and of political and social reforms.” Later in the same year he started the Indian Home Rule Society. In 1906 he opened India House in London, but left :for Paris in 1907 due to fear of the “police noose very close on him.” In 1914 he went to Geneva where he continued the struggle for Indian freedom until his death March 31, 1930. Thus the young man who was a devoted disciple of the Theosophical Masters became in maturity yet another freedom fighter who had to flee British wrath and find French protection. The details of his connection to the Mahatma figures proposed in this book remain hidden; however the facts as stated above qualify him as one of the adepts in the broad definition which has emerged in the course of investigation.

A biography of another member of the Masters’ secret world is found in Advanced Historv of the Panjab, Vol. ll, by G.S. Chambara. It provides the hitherto unknown information that Professor Bhai Gurmukh Singh revived the Singh Sabha movement in 1876, three years after it was founded by Thakar Singh Sandhanwalia.  Apparently the group had become virtually defunct until Bhai Gurmukh Singh took an interest in it.  Born in 1849 th son of a poor cook, the young Sikh showed academic promise which was recognized by Prince Bikram Singh of Kapurthala, his home city. By 1876, when he joined forces with Thakar Singh, he had become a language scholar. Chhambara writes “It was a result of their joint efforts, that the Panjab University Oriental College, which had been opened in 1876, introduced also teaching of the Panjabi language in 1877; Professor Singh himself being appointed a lecturer for the subject.” Bhai Gurmukh Singh founded the Lahore Singh Sabha in 1879 while Thakar Singh remained in Amritsar. Both were leaders of the progressive faction of the group, opposed by the conservatives led by Khem Singh Bedi.

The Punjab University may well have been the first project in which Thakar Singh and his disciple Bhai Gurmukh Singh were associated with the Maharaja of Kashmir. Ranbir Singh’s patronage of the university is mentioned in the first chapter of Book III, where it is recorded that we was honored as its First Fellow for his patronage of language studies and translations. Bhai Gurmukh Singh, it should be recalled, was on terms of intimate friendship with Olcott as late as 1896. It was not until I reached Adyar that I found evidence of how early and how important were his links with the T.S. But in coming to recognize the close bond between the founders of the Amritsar and Lahore Singh Sabhas, I also was obliged to reevaluate the character of Baba Khem Singh Bedi.

Gopal Singh’s History of the Sikh People 1469-1988 gives a much more detailed portrait of Khem Singh than was available in sources previously consulted. The author writes:

Born in 1832, in the house of S. Attar Singh Bedi, at Una, (in the district of Hoshiarpur) and a great grandson of Baba Sahib Singh Bedi, he was a great friend of the British Government. is jiagir was, therefore, continued after the annexation of the Panjab.  In 1857 too, he was of much use to the Government and was later awarded large tracts in the district of Montgomery…He opened many women’s educational institution’s, though female education was not much encouraged in those days.  He helped develop the newly-formed district of Montgomery. Due to his vast influence, he was knighted and was nominated member of the Council of States…He died in 1904, leaving four sons.

Relations between Khem Singh, Thakar Singh and Bhai Gurmukh Singh were apparently strained for some time before the latter two took up the cause of Dalip Singh. The identity of Khem Singh as the Chohan seems less certain in light of facts uncovered in the Nehru Library. For example, the Amritsar Akal Takht, under Khem Singh’s influence, excommunicated Bhai Gurmukh Singh on March 18, 1887, just as Dalip Singh went to Russia. Most Singh Sabhas sided with the Lahore progressives led by Bhai Gurmukh Singh; most orthodox Sikhs did not. Although Khem Singh Bedi seems to have thoroughly opposed Thakar Singh and his followers once the Dalip Singh plot was initiated, after Thakar’s death he changed his position as described in chapter 2.

My search in the library uncovered six sources which were particularly enlightening on the subject of the Masters of the T.S. The Gulabn_gma _2f_Diwal_KirEal Ram, a biography of Gulab Singh written during the reign of Ranbir, was translated from Persian in 1977. Sukhdev Singh Charak, biographer of Ranbir Singh, translated and annotated the text. Its title page calls Ranbir “the benevolent and exalted, the diamond of the diadem of Government, the lustre of the sword of kingship, the decorator of the crown and throne, the ferocious lion of battle and war…”(17) This source identifies five wives of Gulab Singh, but not which one was mother of Ranbir. This was of interest due to a note in Olcott’s diary written when passing through Jaipur on the train. As he passed a castle, he commented that this was where “my Father ‘s mother was born long ago.” In Founding of The City of Amritsar: A Study of Historical. Cultural, Social and Economic Aspects. edited by Dr. Fauja Singh, includes a chapter entitled “Amritsar and the Singh Sabha Movement” by Gurdarshan Singh. He writes:

“The leaders of the Amritsar Singh Sabha, being drawn almost exclusively from the rich and aristocratic classes of the Sikhs, were not ready to shed off their old prejudices against the low caste Sikhs…who were allowed to visit the gurdwaras only at specified hours… Baba Khem Singh Bedi tried to wield absolute control over the activities…he aspired for reverence due a guru…The radical among the Sikhs dissociated themselves…The gulf between the two parties ultimat ly resulted in the formation of an independent Khalsa Diwan at Lahore in 1886.”

Thakar Singh, it may be supposed, was well respected by the radicals of Lahore by this point due to his intrigues with Dalip. Despite  his status as founder of the Singh Sabha,  his anti-British activities had alienated him from his former Amritsar colleagues. Later in Adyar I unearthed evidence which made it perfectly clear that Blavatsky and Olcott were allied with Bhai Gurmukh Singh and against Baba Khem Singh Bedi from the beginning of the Theosophical work among the Sikhs. But while my research on the Singh Sabha at the Nehru Library provided the groundwork for later explorations in Adyar, in March 1990 the Punjab was off limits to foreign travelers. Crossing the Pakistani border to Lahore was even less feasible. So after five days in Delhi, I proceeded directly to Jammu, keenly regretting that Amritsar and Lahore could not be included in my investigations.

The research journey of early 1990 began in Vermont with a visit to Chittenden, where Blavatsky met both Olcott and Dr. Peebles in 1874 at the Eddy Brothers seances. It ended in France visiting research facilities in Paris and Aix-en-Provence. But Indian travel took 3/4 of my time and had the greatest value for historical discoveries. So for this series of blog posts I am excerpting only the sections on Bombay, Delhi, Jammu, Adyar, and Pondicherry. KPJ

The first two days in Bombay were devoted to sightseeing in the company of three Westerners who arrived the same night as I. We constantly encountered the same con game by which Blavatsky and Olcott were caught upon their arrival. Indians give you something which you haven’t asked for (such as carrying bags across the street) and then demand payment, just as happened to the T.S. Founders in 1879 with Hurrychund Chintamon. But even though Ross, Alfred, Virginia and I had to fight our way through scores of persistent beggars and crooks, our first taste of India was delightful. We arrived on Holi, a festival day in which colored water and powder is sprayed and thrown on anyone who shares the holiday spirit. This symbolizes tarnishing the old and beginning the new, and represents the arrival of spring. Once we were all thoroughly dowsed with water and powder, every Indian we met responded to the sight with friendly smiles, and indeed it was as if we had become honorary Indians.  The feeling of being swept up in Indianness, rather than standing outside looking in, persisted throughout the trip. The immediate acceptance which Blavatsky and Olcott found in many parts of India became more understandable once I tasted the Indian readiness to absorb foreigners. After seeing the Hanging Gardens and Towers of Silence, the Jain Temple, Chowpatty Beach, several museums and the Elephanta Caves, I was ready to begin my research.

The Asiatic Society Library impressed me as the most beautiful building in Bombay– from the outside. The interior, however, was dusty and ill-maintained. Pigeons fiew around the rafters, and in the work areas books were piled on floors in disarray. Later I read that a renovation campaign was being launched to restore the early 19th century building to its original grandeur. The uniqueness of the collection certainly merits the effort.

The first relevant source I discovered was Swami Dayananda Sarasvati: A Study of His Life and Work by Krishnan Singh Arya and P.D. Shastri. This 1987 publication includes a revealing letter from Olcott to Dayananda, dated February 1878. Written in New York, it expresses the state of mind in which the T.S. President approached the Arya Samaj leader:

I had arrived in India filled with perplexity about Olcott’s understanding of the Masters upon his arrival 111 years before. This passage recalled one very important fact, which is that Swami Dayanand had been described by HPB to Olcott as an initiate of her Masters. That the Swami later referred to M. and K.H. as nonexistent suggests that in one case or the other HPB deceived Olcott about her Masters’ identities.

A second visit to the Asiatic Society Library led to a discovery far more intriguing than the previous day’s find. I had looked through all the entrie’s on the T.S. and the Arya Samaj, and was doubting that there was more to find, when an Indian engaged me in conversation at the card catalog. Upon learning of my quest, he suggested that I examine Emma Coulomb’s pamphlet Some Account of my Intercourse_with Madame Blavatsky. This was entered under Psychic Phenomena rather than Theosophy, so without the help of my fellow researcher I would have missed it– which would have been a great shame in light of what it contained.

In the first hundred pages of the pamphlet, only a few nuggets of information related to my hypotheses or characters. In her preface, Coulomb comments that although she states the truth, and only the truth, “‘I do not state the whole truth, nor shall I do this, unless I am provoked to it. Madame Blavatsky alone will know what I keep back…” This may refer to political secrets, for part of the reason the Coulombs were expelled from the Adyar Headquarters of the T.S. was “‘that Madame Coulomb repeatedly said to members of the T.S., as well as to outsiders, that the T.S. had for its object the overthrow of the British rule in India. “‘

In the same letter to Emma cited in chapter 2 regarding the Maharaja of Holkar and the Phoenix venture, HPB also made a mysterious reference to a man in Poona. Mme. Coulomb omits the name, although it was given in the letter. HPB writes of a businessman she visited in Poona where he lived with his wife and children. He told her that she looked “younger by ten years, younger than he had seen me in America…”‘ No further researches succeeded in uncovering this man’s identity, but he may explain various elusive references to Indian visitors during HPB’s New York years.

By far the most significant find in the pamphlet was a letter from HPB to Alexis Coulomb, written in Paris on April 1, 1884. This was just after Blavatsky had been warned of the Coulombs’ threats in Adyar, to which she responded “‘If you compromise me before Lane-Fox, Hartmann and the others– ah well, I shall never return to Adyar, but will remain here or in London where I will prove by phenomena more marvellous still that they are true and that our Mahatmas exist, for there is one here at Paris and there will be also in London.“‘(Italicized in the original.)    

This letter is not among those whose authenticity is d’isputed, for Coulomb immediately showed it to several Theosophists including Hartmann.  It admits nothing which would support the Coulombs’ later charges against her, and indeed asserts the reality of the phenomena and the Masters. What makes it such a crucial bit of evidence from the perspective of the present inquiry is that it was written IN THE MIDDLE OF JAMAL-AD-DIN’S STAY IN PARIS AND FIVE MONTHS BEFORE THAKAR SINGH’S ARRIVAL IN LONDON. There was a short period of time in which such a letter could have been written if referring to these two hypothetical Mahatmas; it was written exactly then.

The Lanny Budd series of eleven novels was published from 1940 through 1953. Its fictional protagonist is the heir of an American munitions fortune, but his adventures take him through real places meeting real people all over Europe from WW1 through WW2. I am not yet halfway through the first volume but consider the series a masterpiece and his Pulitzer well-deserved. Elbert’s political history writings echo Sinclair’s in so many ways, perhaps because they were contemporaries and lived in southern California and shared many interests. But I suspect they were personal friends as he got the birth data from the source.

This is an excerpt from In Search of the Masters, 1990; the epilogue was a travel diary beginning in Vermont and ending in France, with four segments about India in between. This is the third of the four; others will be shared as future blog posts along with the Vermont and France segments when they are relevant to people featured in the BOL lessons.

The spring of 1990 was a period of extreme tension and violence in India’s northwestern states of Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir. Terrorist violence in Punjab had sharply increased since the 1990 elections, and every day the newspaper reported at least five to ten deaths in clashes between police and terrorists there. Far more appalling, and unnerving to the traveler, were incidents such as the bombing of a Hindu religious procession in Batala, causing 36 deaths. Buses and trains were regularly attacked, and at times all non-Sikhs were removed and killed by the terrorists. Travelers were killed by mines on the roads and by gunfire at roadblocks. The Indian government forbade foreigners to enter the Punjab, and thus when I bought a bus ticket to Jammu I assumed it would pass through Himachal Pradesh. A few hours after leavin Delhi, however, I found myself passing through the heart of the Punjab. When I expressed my alarm to Sudesh, a Kashmiri Hindu I met on the bus, he reassured me by saying that Punjab was much less dangerous than Kashmir. And indeed, despite the regularity of terrorist attacks and the unwillingness of Sikh political leaders (of various Akali Dal factions) to condemn the violence, most Indians seemed confident that peace would eventually be restored in the Punjab. After several days in Delhi, I had come to see the Sikhs as an integral part of India.  They make up 8% of the capital region’s population, and live there in peace and harmony, although the massacres following Mrs. Gandhi’s assassination are vividly remembered. Despite a substantial number of die-hard terrorists, aided and abetted by Pakistan, the great majority of Punjabi Sikhs are loyal to India and deplore the violence.

In Kashmir, on the other hand, the existence of India in its present boundaries seems very much at stake.  Virtually all of the 100,000 plus Kashmiri Hindus fled their homes during the early spring of 1990, most of the refugees settling in Jammu. Kashmiri Muslim separatists, their leaders trained and armed in Pakistan, had given notice to their Hindu neighbors that they faced the choice of death, flight or conversion to Islam. Unlike the Punjabis, a large majority of Kashmiri citizens favored independence or union with Pakistan. To utter a word in favor of India was to risk being murdered. While Jammu’s Hindus and Ladakh’s Buddhists looked on in horror, the Muslims in Kashmir indulged in a rampage of anti-India, pan-Islamic violence. My week in Jammu was the last week before the army was called out and curfews were enforced. Although at times I was filled with anxiety, in retrospect these were the best of times in which to understand the Masters Morya and Koot Hoomi in historical context.

My journey to Jammu had been envisioned as the climax of the trip in a spiritual as well as an intellectual sense. Olcott’s November 1883 trip to Lahore and Jammu marked the culmination of his search for the Masters, as well as the quest of Damodar Mavalankar. Despite the considerable skepticism with which I regard much of the literature about the Mahatmas, Jammu had a deeply religious significance for me. Ranbir Singh built seven temples in the vicinity during his reign, and the palace complex where he welcomed Olcott and Damodar is now the center of state government. While Bombay and Delhi were stimulating and necessary parts of my journey northward, Jammu was the destination. And despite the flood of refugees and soldiers, it was a very pleasant and comfortable city. The pace was relaxed, the architecture charming, and the spring weather refreshing. There were no beggars and little filth. After the teeming masses of Bombay and Delhi, the rotten stink of the former .and the fierce dusty heat of the latter, Jammu seemed a completely different world. The people and their city are clean, noble, dignified and handsome.

Before doing research in the traditional manner, I visited the two temples associated with Ranbir Singh to familiarize myself with his legacy. The Ranbireshwar Temple overlooks the city, and in the evenings it becomes a community center of sorts. I sat in the courtyard of the temple, under a tree which sheltered a lingam in a small enclosure. A statue of Ranbir Singh stands on a tall pedestal in the center of the courtyard. People regularly performed puja to the statue, the tree, or the lingam, by draping flowers, ringing bells, and bowing. The temple, lingam and virtually everything in the temple complex are painted in a flesh tone. Inside the temple is another huge lingam. Just outside the entrance is a portrait of Ranbir, to which people also make obeisance. As I sat under the tree, a family of six happened by and sat on the other side. Their friendly children chased one another around the tree using me as a sort of station in the game. With families and children everywhere, phallic symbols in profusion, and all painted in flesh tones, my thoughts turned to the myth of the Masters. According to Blavatsky, Morya and Koot Hoomi were virgin ascetics. In one Mahatma letter, M. called himself a poor Tibetan fakir.” But the real Ranbir had five wives and many children, and was completely enmeshed in the world of physical reality, despite his undeniable spiritual qualities. The Raghunath temple complex is one of the largest in North India, but is relatively new, dating from the nineteenth century. Ranbir’s shrine is the largest of the seven domed temples along the front tier. Flesh colored bases are topped with gray stone domes, all decorated with golden spires. Behind the front tier, which lies along the main bazaar, there is a large enclosed courtyard behind which is a huge older temple complex containing idols in great profusion. I made the rounds of the various gods, worshipped Ganesh with the aid of a friendly priest, then returned to the front and Ranbir’s temple, the tallest of all. The reverence with which visitors entered his shrine revealed that he is still seen as the father of his people. It was a surprise to find the Sri Guru Singh Sabha Gurdwara across the bazaar from the Raghunath complex. It appeared to date from Ranbir’s reign, and its prime location suggests that it was built with his approval and support.

Jammu’s most important research attraction was the State Archives Repository, located in the palace complex where Olcott and Damodar were welcomed by the MaharaJa. Although relatively few of the archival materials were in English, there was an English index to Ranbir’s Persian correspondence.  There I found a number of entries which expanded my understanding of the mysterious Theosophical Masters. Ranbir Singh’s interest in comparative religion is suggested by the presence of a “description of the adventures of the Naqashbands of Bukhara,” combined with notes on the route between Peshawar and Bukhara. Not long after this, there appears an entry for the diary of Shah Mohammed “regarding his tour through Balakh, Bukhara, Kabul and Kohkand with a description of political influence of Russia in Kohkand and Bukhara in the S. year 1922 [1865 A.D.J.] The next year there were two diaries submitted. Mohammad Khan Bukhari and Malik Mohammad Kishtawari reported on a “Journey into Russian Turkestan with a description of· the Russian administration in the districts.” Mehta Sher Singh described a tour undertaken at the command of Ranbir Singh “describing the trade etc. in Russian Asia, Kabul, Peshawar and Yarkand.” In the same year, Ranbir received a note “on the military strength of Kabul under the late Dost Mohammed Khan (Amir of Kabul) and Amir Sher Ali Khan.”

My main obJective in searching through the State Archives was to find correspondence with the T.S. Founders, and in this regard the Journey to Jammu was a complete failure. The references to Kabul and the expanding Russian empire, however, led to another, equally satisfying proof of one of my hypotheses about the Masters. It was initially confusing in that the date given, 1293 A.H., corresponds to 1915 A.D. and is thus obviously wrong. After long perplexity, I concluded that it is a transposition of S. 1923, which equals 1866-67. The entry reads “Letter, dated Ludhiana the 29th of ZilhaJ 1293 A.H. from ShuJa-u-Mult, ex King of Kabul and Princ·e Jalal-ud-Din regarding their interview with His Highness MaharaJa Ranbir Singh Jang Bahadur.”(38)  “Prince Jalal-ud-Din” is none other than Jamal d-Din “al-Afghani,” and Shuja-u-Mult a title for the Amir -Muhammed Azim Khan, with whom he was exiled from Kabul.  Placed in context of their pro-Russian policies and Ranbir’s strong interest in Russian support, this would appear to be the “smoking gun” proving Jamal ad-Din’s relationship with the Maharaja. While the details of their later involvements with Mme. Blavatsky or the Russian government remain occult, this entry alone made my journey to Jammu worthwhile, despite all the anxiety of travel in the region.  The date for Jamal ad-Din’s flight from Kabul is given as 1868 in other sources, so some confusion remains. But the identity of the “Prince” and ex-King is quite clear, and the context of pro-Russian policies is equally apparent. The later association of Afghani and Ranbir remains, however, a mystery.

Other fragments of proof of a network linking the men identified herein as the Mahatmas were also found in the same index. In 1870, Ranbir Singh received an acknowledgment of two donations, of Rs. 50,000 and 30,000, “as financial aid to the [Punjab] University and for translation of Oriental works respectively.” This refers to the same institution and the same special interest as those of Bhai Gurmukh Singh, F.T.S. and leading disciple of Thakar Singh Sandhanwalia. Although the Singh Sabha involvement in the Oriental College of the Punjab University came a few years later, it is almost inescapable that this was the context in which Ranbir Singh/Mahatma Morya became acquainted with Thakar Singh/Mahatma Koot Hoomi and the Singh Sabha, the “Lodge” of the latter.

A surprising Mahatmic connection appears in the Maharaja’s purchase of real estate in Varanasi from “Sardar Dayal Singh, Rais Amritsar.” The briefly mentioned possibility (Book III, chapter 2) that Dayal Singh Majithia was among the Theosophical Mahatmas became much more significant in light of evidence unearthed a few days later at Adyar. The last item of interest for Theosophical history is the program, in English, of the ceremonies at the Durbar in Lahore held November 15, 1880. The T.S. Founders were present at this ceremony, and in Adyar I later discovered Mme. Blavatsky’s revealing account of the experience.

The day of my trip to the State Archives was the most moving of the entire trip, due in part to the setting.  Jammu is a city of winding lanes climbing steep hills, and the Archives Repository is at the top of one of the steepest. With only a vague set of directions, I wandered uphill, not sure that I’d ever find the Palace complex which remains the center of government. Then, as I rounded a corner, the gateway to the Palace came into view, and I knew immediately that this was the place I was looking for. It appeared exactly as I had envisioned i,t while reading Olcott’s account of his visit in 1883. On the way I had visited the Sri Ranbir Singh Public Library, which was alas devoid of useful material. Descending back to the center city, I was shaken from my historical euphoria by a startling confrontation. Seeing many people milling about the courtyard of the Ranbireshwar Temple, I decided to take a photograph, and walked over to the fence to do so. Pointing the camera so as to include the people in the foreground, I was  immediately challenged by an extremely irate young man who told me in an agitated voice that photography was forbidden there. Having seen Indians taking pictures the day before, I knew this was untrue, but wasn’t prepared to argue with him. So I told him that I hadn’t taken the picture, and proceeded down the hill toward my hotel. Before I had gotten very far, I was surrounded by two dozen outraged young Hindus, demanding to know who I was and what I was doing there. Unsatisfied with my reply, they insisted on seeing my passport, and seemed to become more threatening as I showed reluctance to hand it over. Feeling that I had little choice, I complied, which produced an immediate about-face, apologies, and an invitation to sit and talk. The man who had initially accosted me acted as spokesman for the group, and explained that they were holding a meeting of the Kashmir Hindu Students Union in front of the temple. This was a group of young Hindu refugees driven from their homes by Muslim separatist violence and threats. For over an hour, I talked with them, first in the shadow of Ranbir Singh’s statue and later with a smaller group in a teahouse. They urged that I include their story in my book, and I agreed.

cover illustration, Ray M. Hershberger; l-r Maharaja Ranbir Singh, Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, Thakar Singh Sandhanwalia

After reading Dominic Green’s The Religious Revolution (Macmillan 2022) I was surprised to find that his bibliographic citation to my research was to my first self-published book which went out of print almost thirty years ago. The pen and ink portrait on the cover by my friend Ray Hershberger features Jamal ad-Din at the top. Everything Green writes about Theosophy in India is insightful and amusing, but nothing strikes me as a major breakthrough compared to this discussion of Egypt:

On March 27, 1884, Blavatsky’s party crossed the Seine, rounded the Louvre and the Tuileries Gardens, and made the ascent to Afghani’s attic. Blavatsky and Afghani had first met in Cairo in the early 1870s, probably through the Star of the East Masonic lodge.  Each had moved to India in 1879, Blavatsky to Bombay after the seance scandal, and Afghani, expelled from Egypt for plotting against the Khedive, to Hyderabad. In India, the British had spied on them both, taking Afghani for a Muslim rabble-rouser and Blavatsky for a Russian agent.  In India, Afghani fished in the same waters as the Theosophists, and used the same bait.  In a talk at Calcutta University in 1882, he called on Hindus and Muslims to form an Indian nation by reviving their original wisdom and language. Afghani and Blavatsky were fellow travelers on the road of philosophical religion.  They were also heading toward a confrontation with the European empires.  When the English radical Wilfrid Scawen Blunt squeezed into the attic, he found Blavatsky and Afghani deep in conversation about the Mahdi of Sudan. The Mahdi had expelled the slave traders and Turkish garrison from the upper reaches of the Nile and declared a caliphate.  If his revolt spread, it would soon threaten Egypt, the Suez Canal, and the Red Sea ports, and even sever the links between Britain and India.  Who, Blavatsky asked, was this man who threatened to close the sea lanes and the empire that depended on them?

The endnotes to the book do not cite a source for the 1884 Wilfrid Scawen Blunt meeting with Blavatsky, Olcott, and Jamal ad-Din in Paris, and that this was a renewal of old acquaintances in Egypt from 1870. I discovered an earlier book from Green that goes into greater detail, so have ordered it. This is more relevant to the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor and its successors than to Theosophists, thanks to the legendary beginning of the HBofL in Egypt in 1870 although its documented founding was in 1884 in England. A Masonic lodge is of huge importance in the story, so I look forward to further insights from the older book.

These are all the published reviews of my first two books, and appraisals in later books, that I shared on a Theosophical history website in 2000. Of the 22 reviewers, only two were unfriendly, from opposite points of view, both more polemical than historical in tone.

For Theosophists the book event of 1994 is without much doubt this product of 8 years of painstaking research by scholar-librarian and theosophist Paul Johnson. Though it will not be happily received by those who cherish the larger-than-life Mahatma legends, the book is noteworthy first for the individuals who contributed to its compilation, and additionally for its broad range of acknowledged sources…Rather than definitive assertions of fact, it is a look through many windows at fascinating, incomplete scenes and events of 19th century occultism. These findings are fitted together to make a hypothesis accompanied by an invitation to look further, dig more deeply, and objectively begin to know the uniquely gifted visionary that HPB was.” Claire Walker, Reflections of a Theosophist, 1994

“Previous works about the mysterious Madame Blavatsky are full of conflicting information, since she left behind a trail of concocted legends. The Masters Revealed, by K. Paul Johnson, strips away most of the fantasy and provides a wealth of new material…K. Paul Johnson’s book is a real original. In straightforward, readable prose, it presents a panorama of heroes, heroines and eccentrics. Tracing Madame Blavatsky’s secret life, it often reads like an occult whodunit about a woman who was, in fact, as fascinating as the legends she created about herself.” Edward Hower, The New York Times Book Review, 1995

“Whether read as a ‘whodunit’ or as fact, it is a remarkable piece of research in a hitherto unexplored field of study.” Joy Mills, The Quest, 1995

“Johnson’s The Masters Revealed is somewhat quixotic, but offers the best separation of fable from history of the founders of the Theosophical Society. In many ways Johnson’s theses provide a beginning at independent, non-fabulous accounts of whom the real cohorts of HPB were.” Paul Nagy, Critical Notice, 1995

“Notwithstanding the reservations that a theosophical student might have, there is no doubt that Johnson has done his research, has examined records and archives and followed up clues in H.P.B.’s handwriting. It must also be said that his handling of the information he has discovered is objective, and the conclusion he comes to as to the possible identities of the theosophical Masters, notably Morya and Koot Hoomi, is well justified.” Geoffrey Farthing, The Theosophical Journal, 1995

“It turns out that Blavatsky may really have known what she was talking about. Much of the information in her books is truly old occult teaching, known to a relatively few. Madame seems to have both had access to a few formerly secret works…and to have absorbed a great deal from personal contact with a number of people who had made a lifelong study of the occult. Although she was accused of being a Russian spy, this does not seem to have been true. This book is an interesting study of an aspect of a still-mysterious personality.” Gordon Stein, The American Rationalist, 1995

The Masters Revealed is a record of historical research with a flawed thesis that dooms it to frustration. Johnson has…not revealed HPB’s Masters. He has not touched the mystery.” John Algeo (President, Theosophical Society in America), Theosophical History, 1995

“Johnson is on the right track. He understands, as many of Blavatsky’s biographers have not, that her life and work contain an intricate web of fact and fiction, of sincere and profound spiritual understanding combined with a taste for chicanery and the more than occasional deception.” Richard Smoley, Parabola, 1995

“At last, the historical identities of Madame Blavatsky’s occult ‘Masters’ have been revealed…A scholarly work that will shape the future of skepticism of this mysterious ‘religion.'” The Skeptic, 1995

“Each account advances piecemeal a complex argument about Blavatsky’s career. Johnson admires her doctrines but denies her claims that they were dictated by a secret society of spiritual advanced ‘Masters.’ He argues that Blavatsky frequently lied about events while her ideas were her own synthesis of various European and Asian esoteric traditions. He further claims that Blavatsky was a political figure no less than a religious one, like other revolutionaries who worked from secret societies, such as Giuseppe Mazzini; above all, that her `Masters’ were real figures…involved in a secret struggle against British rule in India and Egypt.” John Ferris, Intelligence and National Security, 1995

“Consider, for example, what becomes of Madame Blavatsky in the hands of K. Paul Johnson, the best-informed but hardly the most reliable commentator on Theosophy. Though he acknowledges HPB’s light regard for the truth and reluctantly explodes several features of her legend, Johnson airily maintains that she ‘devot[ed] all her energies to the enlightenment and liberation of humanity.’ Her lies, he declares, were told with the most selfless of motives, to protect the identities of her politically active tutors in Egypt and India…such piety obscures both the cynical glee Blavatsky must have taken in perpetrating ruses and the obvious self-interestedness of her concocted ‘Mahatma letters.'” Frederick Crews, The New York Review of Books, 1996

[Initiates of Theosophical Masters] “provides useful information about the figures surrounding H.P. Blavatsky in her Indian years and about the parallels between Theosophy and other religious movements that introduced the religious teachings of Asia and the Middle East to the West…the comparisons between Theosophy and the movements, specifically Radhasoami, Baha’i, and the Fourth Way, will hopefully provide future researches with landmarks to aid them in their investigations.” Mike Ashcraft, Gnosis, 1997

“Readers familiar with New Testament scholarship will recognize Johnson’s strategy as a form of demythologization– a search for the ‘historical Masters.’ Strip away the mythical veneer from Blavatsky’s portraits of these adepts and examine carefully her connections with secret societies, political reform movements, religious reform organizations, and agencies of the British, French, and Russian governments. You will discover real human beings undergirding and inspiring Blavatsky’s invention of her Masters…While Blavatsky says these beings chose her. Johnson concludes that she chose them.” Stephen Prothero, Religious Studies Review, 1997

[Initiates of Theosophical Masters] “draws an evocative portrait of the occult revival since the end of the nineteenth century, including the Orient…and its intricate connections with the independence struggles of the time.” Bulletin d’Histoire des Religions, 1997

[Initiates of Theosophical Masters] “deserves to be read by all students of Blavatsky and of the history of religious ideas.” John Cooper, The High Country Theosophist/Theosophy in Australia, 1997

“By deconstructing Blavatsky’s life and work, Johnson has been able to decode her ‘Master mythos’ as referring not to ethereal spectres but to living religious, political, and esoteric figures. He proves (I think conclusively) from her work that these figures…were involved in political agitation in various forms (including the liberation of India from the British.) Cloaking their identities became a necessity. Blavatsky commandeered the earlier Freemasonic concept of Unknown Superiors or Secret Chiefs and used it as a gloss to cover the identities of her ‘comrades’ in revolution.” New Dawn, 1998

“In 1994, an American scholar, K. Paul Johnson, published a book, The Masters Revealed, which suggested that ‘the Masters’ were, in fact, a combination of numerous adepts and teachers whom Blavatsky had met in her travels in Asia and the Levant, and fictionalized personae based on living people whom Blavatsky was known to have associated with in India.” Mick Brown, The Spiritual Tourist, 1998

“K. Paul Johnson speculates that one of the chelas of the Mahatmas, one Chandra Cusho, is a fictionalization of Sarat Chandra Das, and that the Mahatma Ten-Dub Ughien is based on Ugyen Gyatso. Although it is possible that Madame Blavatsky’s obsession with Tashilunpo and its secret archives and with the Tashi Lama may have come from a reading of Bogle, it may also have been derived from the connection of Das and Ugyen Gyatso to the monastery and to the Sengchen Lama, from whom they received Tibetan texts that they brought back to Darjeeling.” Donald S. Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, 1998

“In an intricate feat of deduction, K. Paul Johnson, a scholarly explorer of the esoteric tradition, maintains in The Masters Revealed (1994) that among the real life models for Madame Blavatsky’s Tibetan Masters were Das and his fellow pundit Ugyen Gyatso, along with their Tibetan patron, Losang Palden, the chief minister of the Panchen Lama…densely written, fascinating, and controversial.” Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac, Tournament of Shadows, 1999

“The modern scholar K. Paul Johnson has connected them with Indian political and spiritual leaders Blavatsky was acquainted with; although questions remain even about Johnson’s thesis, it remains the most plausible one.” Richard Smoley and Jay Kinney, Hidden Wisdom, 1999

“Blavatsky claimed to have obtained her wisdom in hidden lamaseries in Tibet and Central Asia, where she had found secret texts like the (imaginary) Stanzas of Dzyan. She also relied on material channeled from great supernatural Masters, members of the Great White Brotherhood, a select club that included Jesus, the Buddha, Confucius, Mesmer, and Cagliostro, as well as real-life occultists she had consulted over the years…the living Masters, whom she had exalted into mythological supernatural beings.” Philip Jenkins, Mystics and Messiahs [citing KPJ], 2000

“K. Paul Johnson’s impressive biographical research shows that Blavatsky was more involved with the campaign for Indian independence than had been previously recognized…his original biographical hypothesis [is] that Blavatsky’s Masters were in large part real people whose character she exaggerated and whose true identity she concealed for political reasons. While not gainsaying this idea, which Johnson presents in startling and often compelling detail, it should be made clear that however much real ‘Masters’ may have figured in Blavatsky’s development, in her peculiar mental state they were reworked unconsciously into dream characters, whom she never met except in her mind’s eye.” Tim Maroney, The Book of Dzyan, 2000.

 

This is a truly beautiful book! In this case it can be judged by its cover but also by its contents. The first half provides a thorough but concise summary of the history of the Orphic hymns and interpretations of Orpheus from ancient Greece through the Roman Empire down to the present. The second half consists of translations of the hymns. These are the first two endorsements of the new book among seven quoted on the publisher’s website.

“Tamra and Ronnie have outdone themselves! This book is the most comprehensively intelligent and pleasurably accessible portrait of Orphic mythology now available. Their modern translations of the Orphic hymns yield fresh fruit from an ancient vine. The culmination of their historical and practical research yields a book that testifies to the 21st century: this music is magic, and the magic is real. Anyone interested in the intersections of music, myth, and magic will delight in this work.”

– Matt Marble, author of Buddhist Bubblegum

“This book is a marvel of pagan revivalism. Tamra Lucid and Ronnie Pontiac have created a symphonic and learned study of the Orphic mythos encompassing history and meaning; translation of key odes; and reconstructed practice. If you yearn for evidence that the old deities are with us today, look no further than The Magic of the Orphic Hymns.”

– Mitch Horowitz, PEN Award–winning author of Occult America and Uncertain Places

The first Orphic Fragment in the book is a Charm rather than a Hymn, written on gold leaf and used as an invocation to the gods:

Exploding from the Great Soul,

souls reel and writhe,

seeking each other in space.

From planet to planet we fall,

crying for home in the abyss,

we are your tears, Dionysus.

Mighty one! God of freedom!

Bring your children back into

your heart of singing light.

The great accomplishment of a book like this is the way it enables what I call “time travel.” Within my narrow range of expertise, late 19thc history, I admire all authors who can bring that period vividly back to life. But the ability to take us back in time not two centuries but more than two millennia requires a special gift. The editors’ introductory explanations share a deep understanding of historical context. The translations themselves bring the past magically back into the present.

These are all the natal charts in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons. All but a few are of individuals rather than organizations. The highlighted names have already been featured in blog posts, while the italicized names are subjects of posts scheduled for the future. There are many names of famous athletes, scientists, and international political leaders that we can presume were included for their fame and newsworthiness and not due to any connection to the Church of Light founders. Several are Church of Light leaders who were personally acquainted with Elbert.

Two of the next posts scheduled are Upton Sinclair, September 20, and Henry A. Wallace, October 7. Sinclair like Hiram Johnson was a famous political leader and California acquaintance of Elbert (or others in the Research Department) who got their chart data from them or their families. Wallace was a native Iowan allied with the same progressive political factions.

1. T.H. Burgoyne, Professor Nicholas Murray Butler, Tom Mooney, Dr. Charles D. Coryell, Sarah Stanley Grimke, Elbert Benjamine, Fred H. Skinner, Marchesse Gulielo Marconni, Marie Dressler, Anthony H.K. Fokker, Montgomery Clift, Gene Tunney, Bette Davis, Alice Faye.
2. Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Dionne Quintuplets, Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe, Count Zeppelin, Albert Einstein, O.O. McIntyre, Dr. Louis Pasteur, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Captain Hugo Eckener, David Belasco, Thomas A. Edison, Luther Burbank.
3. Ethel Barrymore, Evalyn Walsh McLean, Hedda Hopper, Ernie Pyle, Goodwin J. Knight, Harold E. Stassen, Eva Braun, Henry Agard Wallace, Tallulah Bankhead, Margaret Chase Smith.
4. Governor Frank Murphy, George Westinghouse, Albert Dyer, Daniel C. Roper, James Branch Cabell, Leopold Stokowski, John Henry Nash, Edgar Bergen. Hugo L. Black, Thomas E. Dewey, Lenora Conwell, Greta Garbo, W.H. Chaney, John Leslie Jackie Coogan, John F. Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon, Jessie Woodson James, King of the Hobos (Jeff Davis), Major Edward Bowes, Arturo Toscanini, The Church of Light, The Brotherhood of Light Research Department.
5. William Dudley Pelley, Aimee Semple McPherson, Howard Jones, Hugh A. Robinson, Norma Shearer, Mars Baumgart, Judge Clarence H. Gilbert, Max Reinhart, Margre Gestring, John Steven McGroarty, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Astor, Nikola Tesa, Madame Shumann-Heunk, Henry M. Stanley, Admiral Richard E. Byrd, Dr. Charles Horace Mayo, Governor Eugene Talmadge, Ben Bernie, Edith Cavell, Emile Coue, Jack London, Nicola Lenin, Huey P. Long.
6. (Volume 9) Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, Richard Loeb, Billy Sunday, Sainte Therese, Amelia Earhardt, William T. Grant, Clark Gable, Bulwer-Lytton, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Donald Wills Douglas, Dr. Smith Ely Jelliffe, J. Edgar Hoover, Walt Disney.
7. (Volume 14) Noel Coward, Walter Hampden, Dr. W.A. Christensen, Robert Emmett Sherwood, Beardsley Ruml, Ralph Waldo Trine, Edward Doane, Charles Fillmore, Josef Stalin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Eugene W. Iscailuz, Irvin S. Cobb, Norma Madsden, Gen. Eddie Rickenbacker, Faith Baldwin, Edgar Cayce, Maria M. Benjamine, Robinson Jeffers, Dr. Josph B. De Lee, Elbert Hubbard, Gerald P. Nye.
8. (Volume 17) Robert Anthony Eden, Joan Crawford, Speed Mad Youth, Janet Gaynor, John Nance Garner, Shirley Temple Black, Doris Chase Doane, H.S.D. Starnaman, W.M.A. Drake, Judy Garland, George R. Saunders, Margarita Silby, Adelaide E. Himadi, Enid Schultz, Vena S. Naughton, A.E. Charles.
9. (Volume 18) John A. Capone, Joel Kupperman, Lew Ayres, David Lee Norman, Margaret Campbell, Josephine Powell, Herman Wilhelm Goering, Dale H. Maple, Pope Pius XI, Pope Pius XII, Philippe Petain, Pierre Laval, FDR again, Harry S. Truman.
10. (Volume 19) Lawrence Leopold Weitz, Douglas Montero, Daniel Frohman, Samuel Harwick, Wendell Willkie, Pax Waller, Jack Doyle, King Vidor, Gaston B. Means, Hiram Johnson, Harry Bridges, Paul Bruns, Robert B. Story-Judd, Esther Williams.
11. (Volume 20) Elizabeth D. Benjamine, Start of Church of Light Crusade Meetings 1-5-41, Parent-Teachers Association, Yehudi Menuhin, Eva LeGalliene, Ethelbert Nevin, Culbert Olson, Mohandas Karachand Gandhi, Wiley Post, Louisa May Alcott, Earl Warren, Harry Houdini, Sylvan Muldoon, John Barrymore, Elaine Barrie Barrymore, Eleanora Duse, Edith Mary Corn, James Doolittle, Opening of New Church of Light Home.
12. (Volume 21) Vicki Draves, Alben W. Barkley, George C. Marshall, Douglas MacArthur, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John L. Lewis, Chiang Kai-Shek, Hirohito, Bismarck, Herbert Spencer, Maryln Taylor.

[Many more names of late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries appear in the sections of the BOL Lessons on decanates, but without individual charts. Full charts of these individuals can be found on the CofL website.]

The California Museum website has an informative page on Johnson, who had been Theodore Roosevelt’s vice presidential candidate in 1912 when the Republicans nominated William Howard Taft and Roosevelt founded the “Bull Moose” Progressive Party to run against him.

This is a second verbatim extract from the 1997 article for The Neural Surfer that included material about Morya previously excerpted. I consider it illegitimate to go back and revise (as opposed to excerpt intact) something written 25 years ago but have a much changed perspective over the years. KPJ

There is more evidence supporting the identification of Thakar Singh Sandhanwalia (upper right photo) as a prototype of K.H. than there is concerning Ranbir Singh and Morya.  Summarizing that presented in The Masters Revealed:

In April 1878, HPB wrote an article entitled “The Akhund of Swat” which included a glowing encomium for Sikhism.  This referred to Sirdars, each of whom was chief of one of twelve misls.  She added that Sikh Sirdars had secret councils consisting of learned gurus, some of whom were “Masters in Spiritual Science…[who] exhibited astounding miracles.”

In Caves and Jungles HPB describes an acquaintance who is an Akali or temple functionary, an Amritsar native, named Ram-Ranjit-Das, who has a spiritual link to Gulab-Singh.

In Old Diary Leaves Olcott describes “one of the Masters” who meets him at the Amritsar Golden Temple where he is “figuring among the guardians.”

HPB, in a letter reproduced by Richard Hodgson in his report, wrote to Moolji Thackersey about a Sikh friend of the TS that Moolji had presumably described in a letter, commenting “You call him a Sirdar” and adding that “he is of Amritsar.”

She inquires about finding descendants of Ranjit Singh, and asks Moolji to recruit rajas and maharajas to the TS.  Thakar Singh was a Sirdar from Amritsar, a relative of Ranjit Singh, and an associate of several rajas and maharajas with TS links.

The first letter from K.H. to Sinnett dates from October 1880, the month in which the TS Founders visited Amritsar en route to the Durbar in Lahore.

An early K.H. letter was dated from “Amritas Saras” (the Golden Temple) and refers to `greasy’ Tibetans and Punjabi Singhs” as “our best, most learned and holiest adepts.”

The Sikh reform organization the Singh Sabha, founded in Amritsar by Thakar Singh and others, shared many objectives with the Arya Samaj of Swami Dayananda, and worked cooperatively with it.  Ranbir Singh also endorsed much of the Arya Samaj reform program, and was very supportive of the Singh Sabha.  HPB initially portrayed Dayananda as affiliated with M. and K.H., but changed her attitude later.

HPB’s The Durbar in Lahore includes detailed descriptions of Amritsar, the Golden Temple, and Sikhism, and describes a Lahore meeting with Ram-Ranjit-Das, who takes HPB and Olcott to the Maharaja of Faridkot.  This maharaja was a Singh Sabha member and strong supporter of Thakar Singh in later political plots.

The same work includes lengthy discussion of the deposed Maharaja Dalip Singh, in which HPB denounces his conversion to Christianity and shows great sympathy for his widowed mother. Thakar Singh was later instrumental in Dalip’s reconversion to Sikhism.

In November 1883, Olcott went to Lahore en route to Jammu, at the joint invitation of Ranbir Singh and K.H. according to HPB’s letter to Sinnett.  In Lahore he was visited in the flesh by K.H., accompanied by another Master, as were William T. Brown and Damodar Mavalankar according to the testimony of all three.

According to the January 1884 supplement to The Theosophist, Olcott, Damodar and Brown were transported to their quarters by conveyances provided by “Raja Harbans Singh and other Sirdars.”  These quarters were the site of the visit by K.H. described above.

At a reception welcoming the group to Lahore, they were greeted by Sirdar Dayal Singh Majithia of Amritsar and Bhai Gurmukh Singh, both important colleagues of Thakar Singh in the Singh Sabha, as well as a commissioner deputed by Maharaja Ranbir Singh.

Thakar Singh was the cousin of the deposed maharaja Dalip Singh, and in early 1883 decided to go to England to visit him on family business.  But as of November 9 he was still at home and writing to the lieutenant-governor of the Punjab attempting to get permission for the trip.  Sometime in the summer of 1884 he arrived in London, where Sinnett had relocated.

K.H., in a letter to Sinnett during the collapse of the Phoenix venture, sounded a note of patriotic desperation, saying he was “bound to devote the whole of my powers as far as the Chohan will permit me to help my country at this eleventh hour of her misery.”

Another letter from K.H. appealed to patriotic motives repeatedly, commenting that “In the presence of his country perishing in its nationality for want of vitality, and the infusion of fresh forces, the patriot catches at a straw.”

Within two years Thakar Singh embroiled his cousin Dalip in a patriotic scheme involving a plot to restore him to the throne with Russian and French support.  This was regarded as beginning the liberation of all India from British rule.

K.H. had referred to a “dark satire” in the phrase “jewel in the crown” and HPB had called British rule “that curse of every land it fastens itself upon”– in the very letter where she welcomed the friendship of the Sirdar and expressed hope of finding a descendant of Ranjit Singh.

In an April 1884 letter to Alexis Coulomb written in Paris, HPB said in reference to the Mahatmas that “there is one here now and there will be also in London.”  This was during the period when Thakar Singh was attempting to go to London.

Olcott received an unsigned letter saying that “unless you put your shoulder to the wheel yourself Kuthumi Lal Singh will have to disappear off the stage this fall.”  Later the same month of June 1883, two more Mahatma letters came to Olcott,recommending that he “put your whole soul in answer to A.P.S. [Sinnett] from K.H.” and that he “Be careful about letter to Sinnett.  Must be a really Adeptic letter.”  This coincides with the period when Thakar Singh decided to leave India.

In 1896 Olcott toured the Punjab again.  On their first evening in Lahore, he and his companion Lilian Edger dined at the home of Sirdar Amrao Singh, described as a “pillar of strength in our Lahore branch.”  Amrao Singh had been a conspirator in the plot to restore Dalip Singh to the throne, lending a servant for Thakar Singh’s use in delivering secret letters to various maharajas appealing for support.

On the same trip they were visited by Bhai Gurmukh Singh, who had become the greatest figure in the Singh Sabha movement, after beginning his career as a protege of Thakar Singh and his colleagues.

Dayal Singh Majithia, another Sirdar who welcomed Olcott, Brown, and Damodar to Lahore, was present at the TS convention for 1884 which led to the forming of the Indian National Congress.  Dayal Singh supported Thakar Singh’s anti-British schemes, although Gurmukh Singh opposed them.

As of September 1 I have a dozen natal charts from the BOL Lessons about historically identifiable individuals, and will devote the next year to discussing them. For literary pseudonyms lacking birth and death dates, any historian relying on such data is left hanging in mid-air– are these real people or not? For the year ahead I will discuss real people with confirmed dates and places of birth and death and ignore alleged, semi-fictional entities with no dates or places of birth, no parents, just magical Mahatmas we meet in dreams and visions but never interrogate about history.

In Search of Morya is excerpted from “Strain at a Gnat, Swallow a Camel,” published in 1997 in The Neural Surfer, on online journal edited by David Christopher Lane. Below is a 2023 reformatted condensation of the section on Ranbir Singh, Maharaja of Kashmir. (In recognition of editorial and authorial integrity, I have not gone back and revised anything excerpted from published works, just share relevant passages verbatim from the 1997 text.)

Caves and Jungles of Hindustan portrays an adept called “Gulab-Singh” as the chief sponsor and companion of the TS Founders in their Indian travels; he is the Rajput ruler of a small native state, called a Thakur in most references but a raja and prince in others.  In a letter to Prince Dondukov-Korsakov, HPB identifies Gulab-Singh as Morya.  Her tales of meeting him in London in her youth, which appear in Caves and Jungles and HPB Speaks, are variations on similar stories about Morya appearing elsewhere.  Ranbir Singh was the most important Rajput ruler who sponsored and supported the TS Founders in their travels and activities; his father was named Gulab Singh. In Old Diary Leaves Olcott describes Caves and Jungles as heavily fictionalized, but also describes Gulab-Singh as a real adept known to him and HPB.  He gives no indication that Gulab-Singh and Morya are the same person, unlike the HPB letter cited above. 

According to Isis Unveiled, HPB visited Ranbir Singh’s kingdom in her youthful travels, passing from Kashmir to Leh, Ladakh (part of his domain).  She calls Ladakh “central Tibet” which suggests that as of 1877 her familiarity with Tibet was quite limited.

In an entry in Olcott’s diary, HPB noted that Edward Wimbridge had brought her a copy of the London Illustrated News which contained “Holkar’s and Some One’s portrait, among others.”  The volume containing a portrait of Maharaja Holkar of Indore, a TS sponsor, also contains a portrait of Maharaja Ranbir Singh of Kashmir, among those of other native rulers. Ranbir Singh is the only one with major ties to the TS, which suggests that he was “Some One.”  HPB’s reverence and evasiveness indicate that she is referring to some important Master figure that she is reluctant to name in the diary.

HPB’s least-known book The Durbar in Lahore gives a lengthy, detailed description of Ranbir Singh and his entourage.  It portrays the main objective of her and Olcott’s trip to Lahore as meeting Ranbir and some Punjabi Sikhs including Maharaja Bikram Singh of Faridkot.

In the preface to Isis Unveiled HPB refers to “influential correspondents” in Kashmir and other places, indicating that there was some connection with important persons in that kingdom prior to her departure from New York for India.

In a letter from K.H. to Sinnett, Ranbir Singh is called “the prince first on the programme” for support of the Phoenix newspaper venture that was to be edited by Sinnett under the Masters’ guidance.

In May 1883, a supplement in The Theosophist described a visit to Jammu by supporters of the Indian Patriotic Association, who had an audience with Ranbir Singh and his sons.  Among them was “D. Nath Bawaji,” the alleged chela with multiple aliases; Ranbir Singh treated him with special hospitality and warmth.  After the death of Ranbir Singh, Bawaji (usually spelled Babaji) rebelled against HPB and disappeared from Theosophical history.

In a letter to Sinnett, HPB says that Ranbir Singh “sent for” Olcott to visit him in the Fall of 1883, and that K.H. ordered him to go to a certain pass.  Thus Olcott’s travel plans were being guided jointly by the orders of Ranbir Singh and K.H., according to HPB.

In his Old Diary Leaves description of his stay in Jammu, Olcott describes Ranbir in extremely favorable terms, as a “thoughtful Vedantin, well acquainted with philosophical systems” who “fully believed in the existence of living Mahatmas.”

Damodar Mavalankar, who had vanished from Ranbir Singh’s guest house and was gone for three days, returned reporting that he had left there with K.H. to go to an ashram of the Masters. He later identified this ashram as being “within His Highness’ Dominion.”

In an article written later, Damodar said that Ranbir Singh “not only believed in the existence of the HIMALAYAN MAHATMAS, but seemed sure of the fact from personal knowledge.”

Ranbir Singh was a chief financial sponsor of the Punjab University, which was deeply influenced by the Singh Sabha, an organization with ties to the TS Founders.  Thakar Singh Sandhanwalia, my nominee for K.H.’s primary prototype, was the founding President of the Singh Sabha.

Ranbir Singh was a profoundly religious ruler, a Hindu who was very supportive of scholarship in Buddhist and Islamic texts as well as those of his own faith, and a social reformer with ideals similar to those of Swami Dayananda Sarasvati’s Arya Samaj, with which the TS leaders were loosely allied at the time of the Lahore durbar.

 A summary paragraph in The Masters Revealed explains the crucial elements of the evidence presented thus far:

     There were two points in the history of the TS at which the Masters Morya and Koot Hoomi appeared as solid historical personages rather than elusive semi-ethereal beings.  At both of these points, the same triangular configuration is apparent:  the Founders of the TS, the Maharaja Ranbir Singh, and an Amritsar Sikh Sirdar are found working in collusion.  In October and November 1880, the Founders’ trip to the Punjab to meet these figures coincided with the beginning of the Mahatma correspondence.  In November 1883, Olcott’s trip to Lahore and Jammu again involved Punjabi Sikh Sirdars and the Maharaja of Kashmir.

August 30 is the birth date of Huey Pierce Long, the most controversial governor of his time, which accounts for his inclusion among the natal charts provided in the Brotherhood of Light lessons. I am currently reading the biography Kingfish by Richard D. White, described here by the publisher:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/189884/kingfish-by-richard-d-white-jr/

Long became part of Hollywood history when a thinly-veiled portrait of him as Willie Stark won multiple Oscars in 1950. This clip from All the King’s Men is the most memorable speech:

There are three categories of new evidence about individuals for whom the Brotherhood of Light books provide birth charts and biographical sketches. First are recent historical books and articles that share new information or perspectives; in Gandhi’s case Accidental Gods. Second are documents or images from genealogical sources about associations and family backgrounds. Third there are often documentary films or videos that shed new light on the subject. Here is a very recent documentary of interest to readers today.

How is Gandhi remembered in India 75 years after his death? | DW News – YouTube

The ever-shifting use of the terms “adept,” “Master” and “Mahatma” over 150 years requires a distinction between Olcott and Blavatsky.  He characterized as Mahatmas acquaintances from Egypt, Tibet, China, Siam, Hungary, and Cyprus, writing “During the three years when I was waiting to come to India, I had other visits from the Mahatmas, and they were not all Hindus or Cashmeris. I know some fifteen in all, and among them Copts, Tibetans, Chinese, Japanese, Siamese, a Hungarian, and a Cypriote.” This is an anachronistic falsification of history. In her letters to Franz Hartmann HPB protested that before coming to India she had spoken of adepts—not capitalized– a more inclusive category of associates than “Mahatmas.” She wrote: “I said to him that I had known adepts, `the brothers’ not only in India and beyond Ladakh, but in Egypt and Syria… The names of the Mahatmas were not even known at the time, since they were called so only in India.”

The Masters Revealed title characters include 15 nationalities and 21 ethnicities; in terms of 2023 borders, 12 from India, 4 from Russia, 2 each from Egypt, the US, and the UK, and 1 each from Hungary, Iran, Algeria, Poland, Malta, Cyprus, Italy, Spain, Tibet, and Sri Lanka. The Indian subdivision includes men of seven different ethnicities speaking as many languages, natives of Gujerat, Punjab, Kashmir, Mysore, Indore, Bengal, and Sikkim. Yet somehow the book has been repeatedly misrepresented as being entirely about two literary pseudonyms, Morya and Koot Hoomi, rather than 32 historical individuals– and strongly condemned on that basis. “The Mahatmas” has come in Theosophical circles to be synonymous with these two aliases instead of any historically documented people with birth and death dates.  Birth and death dates and biographical information “downgrade” them. But in wider popular culture “the Mahatma” came to be identified solely with one person, Mohandas Gandhi.  “The Masters” is even more problematic as it can refer to multiple competing sects promoting guru-worship. To avoid the confusion caused by all this, the term adepts is adopted here as consistently as possible. 

Anna Della Subin discusses the Theosophical Mahatmas at length, with Krishamurti as a human who was deified, but she devotes equal attention to Mahatma Gandhi in this award-winning book.

This 2022 book is the most enthralling example of “collective biography” of all I’ve found in recent years. I was cited in reference to the Theosophical deification of Krishnamurti, but for this blog more relevant is the Brotherhood of Light lessons about Mohandas Gandhi whose status as a “Mahatma” was a matter of public acclaim rather than mysterious claims. Will follow up from volume 20 of the BOL lessons.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250296870/accidentalgods

Henceforth when posting a natal chart and report from the original Brotherhood of Light books, I will add an update with most recent information about the person in question. My analysis of the meditation instructions I followed for years in Search for God groups led to the realization that they derived from an Indian-born California spiritual teacher from the Sant Mat tradition, also known as Surat Shabd Yoga and the Radhasoami Faith. Since then much of the work of Bhagat Singh Thind has been published by his family, but this is the first academic inquiry to date and it sheds much light on his career including his connection to Cayce.

(99+) Doctorji the Divorcé Understanding Bhagat Singh Thind Through His Marriage to Inez Buelen | Philip Deslippe – Academia.edu

This new book from University of Toronto Press fulfills both a hope long expressed and a prophecy I have made, that real significant progress in research on Blavatsky will occur only when a scholar immersed in her Russian writings takes them into account as historical documents. Her chapter on Blavatskaia, as she spells it, is 38 pages so twice the length of usual chapters in academic collections. “Collective biography” has been much on my mind lately, as it covers two of my SUNY Press books as well as Pell Mell and the editorial work I did with Patrick Bowen in Letters to the Sage. All these were focused on the late nineteenth century. But the genre also includes books I admire by Ronnie Pontiac and Gary Lachman whose work spans centuries and millennia. A Woman’s Empire features eight authors of one gender, ethnicity, nationality and era. It is one of the best recent examples of an engaging collective biography that also goes into great scholarly depth in its research. Especially interesting is the author’s discussion of the concurrently published (by the same publisher, Katkov) Durbar in Lahore which by comparison to Caves and Jungles of Hindustan is a more straightforward non-fiction travel book that has yet to be published in book form in English translation.(KPJ)

Propagandist of Russian Imperialism: Madame Blavatsky in India, Chapter Three of A Woman’s Empire, Excerpts:

From Apreleva’s closely observed sketches of Central Asian life, which require the reader to interpret the Russian imperial role in Central Asia, we turn in Part Two to two far more outspoken writers who place Russian imperial efforts into the context of Great Game rivalry with the British, Elena Blavatskaia and Iuliia Golovnina. Chapter three addresses the former, the famous Madame Blavatsky, and her quasi-travel-writing narrative texts written about India. In these texts, while India and the British control of the country are Blavatskaia’s main focus alongside her thoughts, observations, and proclamations about numerous topics, the issue of Russian imperialism in the Caucasus and Central Asia is never far from the surface. Blavatskaia often uses British examples in order to promulgate Russian counterexamples, typically defending the Russian empire as a “better” one and serving as a Russian propagandist.(p111)

Caves and Jungles of Hindostan is certainly also a travel narrative, despite its relative distance from factual reliability… Others included Narayana, a mysterious travelling companion, and The Thakur, or Gulab Lal Singh, the latter of which can be described as “a fictionalized character in the narratives published in the volume From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan. The character broadly corresponds to Helena Blavatsky’s spiritual Master.”(119) (citation to an online website). Not only that, but as K. Paul Johnson points out, his presence sometimes serves as a way to give the Indians a voice against the British: “Miss B—is clearly providing an opportunity to demonstrate the hatred felt by Indians toward the British. Not only does Gulab-Singh exhibit an attitude which is both threatening and derisive, but he also asserts that a successful uprising will occur the moment his brotherhood decides to allow it. Such a portrayal of the Theosophical Mahatmas was quite different from that conveyed to Anglo-Indians like A.P. Sinnett!”(119-120)

Moncure D. Conway

A window into the mindset that embraced Theosophy in Calcutta is provided by Norendro Nath Sen’s second article by that title which appeared in 1882. Sen (1843-1911), editor of the Indian Mirror, was also a founding member of the Calcutta branch. Referring to “the great demand in Bengal for the new work, called `Esoteric Theosophy’,” Sen explained that his appreciation for Theosophy was not based on the teachings of Blavatsky or any living writer, but rather the TS objective of restoring Indian cultural and religious traditions. “Whether it be called Theosophy or after any other name, what we want to see is that the study of our ancient science, philosophy, and shastras should be earnestly taken up, and diligently pursued by our educated countrymen in every part of India…What entitles them to our respect and confidence, is that they have devoted themselves to the disinterested duty of awakening in us an intelligent curiosity to explore our ancient literature, to study our neglected shastras, and to make researches into our old systems of science and philosophy.” (57) Implicit in this remark is a reason that Bengali intellectuals’ enthusiasm for Theosophy declined after a few years; the TS seemed more interested in promoting its own distinctive doctrines than in appreciating India’s ancient traditions. In 1881, Swami Dayananda had complained in a letter to Blavatsky, “You had come here to become disciples, now you wish to become teachers.” (58) Mohini Chatterji continued to work for the goals that had motivated the original TS/Brahmo alliance, through Bengali channels, for another two decades. Beginning in the late 1880s and continuing until at least 1912, he promoted the teachings of Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, and other Bengali mystics to Westerners. In 1898, Vivekananda praised him to a Calcutta audience as “one who has seen England and America, one in whom I have great confidence, and whom I respect and love…working steadily and silently for the good of our country, a man of great spirituality.” (59)

The American Transcendentalist and Unitarian clergyman Moncure Conway (1832-1907), who visited TS headquarters in 1883 and wrote a sarcastic but affectionate account of the experience, reported an encounter with Sen on board the ship which bore him away from India, in an account published many years later.

“This Mr. Sen, of the ‘Indian Mirror,’ was a relative of the Brahmo leader, Keshub Chunder Sen. That he did not have perfect faith in the Theosophic miracles was evident to me from the fact of his expressing regret that the movement should be permitted to be anything more than an ethical and religious reformation. He rather complained of myself and others who were interested only in the ‘signs and wonders,’ being thus the means of preventing Theosophy from developing into the great Reformed Religion of India. He was an intelligent man, and I received from him a clear idea of the causes which had given so-called Theosophy its success…there appeared from America this company of people who had abandoned every form of Christianity, taken up their abode in India to lead in the work of at once rehabilitating and revising these ancient systems, and pointed Hindus and Buddhists to their own scriptures and prophets as fountains of faith and hope. They naturally gained a hold on the hearts of these people, and in a few years moved and attracted them more than did the Christian missionaries in as many centuries.” (60)

The mutual influence of Theosophy and the Bengal Renaissance reached its zenith during the meteoric career of Mohini Chatterji as the model chela of Blavatsky’s Mahatmas. By the early twentieth century, it was fading into history, as seen in the comments of Aurobindo Ghose (1872- 1950) in a 1911 manuscript that was not published until 1997. Objecting to Theosophy’s authoritarianism and obscurantism, Aurobindo connected both to the relationship between India and British imperialism. Under the title “The Claims of Theosophy,” he wrote:

“One sees, finally, a new Theocracy claiming the place of the old, and that Theocracy is dominantly European. Indians figure numerously as prominent subordinates, just as in the British system of government Indians are indispensable and sometimes valued assistants. Or they obtain eminence on the side of pure spirituality and knowledge, just as Indians could rise to the highest places in the judicial service or in advisory posts, but not in the executive administration. But if the smaller hierophants are sometimes and rarely Indians, the theocrats and the bulk of the prophets are Russian, American or English. An Indian here and there may quicken the illumination of the Theosophist, but it is Madame Blavatsky or Mrs Besant, Sinnett or Leadbeater who lays down the commandments and the Law…These peculiarities of the Theosophical movement have begun to tell and the better mind of India revolts against Theosophy. The young who are the future, are not for the new doctrine.” (61)

Aurobindo’s judgment, published decades after his death, provides a glimpse of the disappointment felt by Bengali intellectuals after their initial enthusiastic embrace of the TS. The impact of Blavatsky and Olcott in Bengal, seen through the eyes and words of Bengalis like Mohini, Aurobindo, or Sen, lasted only a few years highlighted in this chapter. But the impact of Bengal on Theosophy represents a more enduring legacy of the cultural exchange. In the twentieth century the significance of the TS/Brahmo Samaj encounter faded from the collective memory of both groups. Nevertheless, Theosophical literature of the decade from 1877 to 1887 offers a rich and multifaceted portrait of the short-lived alliance between the two groups, and the “Indo-Western” perspectives that they shared.

Conclusion

Despite the rich evidence in primary sources, the TS relationship with the Brahmo Samaj has been obscured in subsequent accounts. None of four recent biographies of Blavatsky mentions the Brahmo Samaj (62) and David Kopf’s authoritative study of Brahmo history mentions neither Theosophy nor Spiritualism, while providing exhaustive evidence of western Unitarianism as an influential factor in the Brahmo movement. The TS relationship with the Arya Samaj began after that with the Brahmos, and lasted less than four years, yet it has received a disproportionate share of historical attention because it was more dramatic and public. Like an ill-starred marriage that began in mutual misunderstandings and ended in public divorce, the Arya Samaj relationship was a formal alliance, publicly proclaimed and then publicly dissolved in mutual recriminations. The TS/Brahmo relationship was comparable to a friendship that developed informally and gradually and then faded in the same way. Hence the Brahmo Samaj was downplayed as early as the 1890s in Olcott’s Old Diary Leaves, and virtually forgotten in the twentieth century TS. The present study has sought to redress the historical imbalance and restore Brahmo/TS relations to their proper relevance, which has been recently highlighted by the availability of TS membership records.

57 Norendro Nath Sen, “Theosophy in Calcutta,” Reprinted from The Indian Mirror (Calcutta), Vol. XXII, May 2, 1882, p. 2.] <http://www.blavatskyarchives.com/sen1882b.htm> Accessed August 14, 2014.

58 K.C. Yadav, ed. Autobiography of Dayanand Sarasvati (third edition, Delhi: Manohar, 1987), 62.

59 Gopal Stavig, Western Admirers of Ramakrishna and His Disciples (Uttarakhand: Advaita Ashrama, 2010), 453.

60 Moncure Conway, My Pilgrimage to the Wise Men of the East (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906), 203.

61 Aurobindo Ghose, “The Claims of Theosophy,” Sri Aurobindo. Essays Divine and Human // The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo.- Set in 37 volumes.- Volume 12 (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1997), 67-68. <http://www.aurobindo.ru/workings/sa/37_12/0016_e.htm>

62  There are no index entries for the Brahmo Samaj in Marion Meade’s Madame Blavatsky: The Woman Behind the Myth (1980), Jean Overton Fuller’s Blavatsky and Her Teachers (1988), Sylvia Cranston’s HPB (1993), or Gary Lachman’s Madame Blavatsky: The Mother of Modern Spirituality (2012).

Mohini Chatterji’s role in the Theosophical Society was pivotal but brief, lasting only from 1882 through 1887. Chatterji was a great grandson of Ram Mohun Roy and his wife was the great granddaughter of Debendra Nath Tagore (1817-1905). As a promising young lawyer, Mohini attended the final annual meeting of the TS in Bombay in November 1882, as the headquarters moved to Madras at the end of the year. Mohini went to Europe with Olcott and Blavatsky in 1884 and was hugely successful in the propaganda role for which he had been recruited. He was well-spoken, well educated, and handsome, and the latter quality made him attractive to female Theosophists, one of whom produced a hundred love letters from him after learning of the existence of his wife in Calcutta.(52) During the years of his TS involvement he did more than any other Indian to promote Western appreciation of Hinduism, and to integrate Hindu ideas with a Western esoteric framework. In April 1886 his extended visit to Dublin made a lifelong impression on William Butler Yeats, whose poetry reveals the influence of Hindu ideas absorbed from Mohini. Most notably, Yeats wrote a poem in 1928 entitled “Mohini Chatterjee,” which brought attention to him in his old age when he was largely forgotten by Western Theosophists.

Before his resignation, Mohini joined forces with Arthur Gebhard in a privately distributed manifesto challenging the leadership of the Theosophical Society and the powers of its president in particular. Dated September 23, 1886, the joint statement appeared under the title “A Few Words on the Theosophical Organization” and was denounced by Blavatsky in a letter to William Q. Judge (1851-1896) as “ungrateful, cold, and unjust to poor Olcott and cruel” adding that Mohini was “now regarded as a Jesus on wheels and a Saint” who owed his fame to “Olcott’s advertisements of him and my enthusiastic claims for him.”(53) Mohini’s change of perspective, after years of serving faithfully as a supporter of her claims about the Mahatmas, is also evident in her complaints to Judge, Mohini was believed responsible for persuading two London Theosophists that the Masters “were no longer regarded as the living actual Adepts, but either white Magicians with grayish tints, or `fictions’… unreachable Beings they could neither communicate, nor take concern in worldly or private affairs could never write letters or send messages—therefore our Masters could never be MAHATMAS…Mohini is then exercising for over six months his influence over Miss Arundale to make her lose faith & belief even in the Masters.”(54)

Before leaving America, Mohini was embraced by the Boston Unitarians and Transcendentalists as evidenced by his role as a featured speaker at the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the arrival of the Rev. Cyrus A. Bartol (1813-1900) as pastor of Old West Unitarian Church. He was thus returning to the alliances that the Brahmo Samaj had established in the 1830s with the Unitarians of Britain and America. Mohini’s presence as a speaker at this event is a reminder that Unitarianism was the first Western movement with which the Brahmo Samaj found common cause:

“It affords me very great pleasure to have this opportunity of saluting a body of men, brothers and Christians, in the name of the God who is the one God, no matter under how many different names and different forms he may be worshipped; the God who is the Father of all men, in whom we live and move and have our being… In the home of my childhood there was a book called ‘The Precepts of Jesus: Guide to Peace and Happiness.’ This book was written by an ancestor of mine. The great misunderstanding and misconception of the Christian faith that prevails in our country had given me such a false opinion of Christianity that I thought it would be a perfectly profitless thing to read this book… There is another reason why I have a personal pleasure in being here. Fifty-four years ago, four years before Dr. Bartol began his ministry here, an ancestor of mine died in Bristol, England, surrounded by Christians who believed in the unity of God. Therefore it is to me a matter of delight that I have this opportunity of addressing you as men, as brothers, and as Christians.”(55)

Mohini was not simply embracing Christianity and rejecting Theosophy; his position was nuanced but he was moving out of the orb of Blavatsky’s influence by returning to the conciliatory and pro-Western stance of the early Brahmo movement. Having served as a Theosophical missionary to the West, he was rejecting his role as the spokesman of Mahatmas who were harshly critical of Christianity, and returning to an earlier model of Indo-Western relations that did not exalt Indian religions over others. The celebrity he achieved in England, Ireland, and America may have turned his head as Blavatsky and her supporters believed. But his remarks at Bartol’s anniversary celebration indicate a genuine change of heart about a cooperative rather than competitive attitude of Hindus to Christians, which was a return to the path of his ancestors.

Cyrus A. Bartol

Having gotten too close to the flame of Blavatsky’s political involvements might have burned him, according to evidence unearthed in Christy Campbell’s 2002 The Maharaja’s Box. Campbell discovered a letter written by Philip D. Henderson (1840-1918) in 1886, when he had become the “general superintendent of the Thugee and Dacoity department,” reporting to Foreign Secretary Sir Henry Mortimer Durand (1850-1924). Henderson had been responsible for surveillance of the Theosophical Society since its arrival in India in 1879, and had become concerned about TS involvement in attempts to incite the exiled Maharaja Dalip Singh to open rebellion against the British. This led to an investigation of Dalip Singh’s associations in England, and on June 15, 1886 Henderson reported to the Police Commissioner of Madras:

“When Colonel Olcott was in India in 1882-83, he founded a secret society among the admitted. The purpose of this secret society is said to be to send information to Russia, and the headquarters are now said to be in Madras. An agent of the society was sent to England and is supposed to be the medium, or one of the mediums, of transmitting information. This man is one Mohini Mohun Chatterji… I heard from England myself that Mohini Mohun was in the habit of seeing a great deal of Duleep Singh … at the present time the necessity for vigilance to intrigues going on in India has been impressed on the Government of India.”(56)

In light of the fact that Mohini’s dealings with the maharaja came to the attention of the Government of India, it is conceivable that attempts were made to dissuade him from continued association with Blavatsky and the TS, and that his distancing himself from her was motivated by pressures brought to bear behind the scenes. Whatever the combination of factors, after his resignation in October 1887, Mohini had no further dealings with the TS other than assisting G.R.S. Mead (1863-1933) with an 1896 translation of the Upanishads, which he did under a pseudonym.

52 Letters of H.P. Blavatsky to A.P. Sinnett (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 1973), 297.

53 H.P. Blavatsky, “The Original Programme of the Theosophical Society,” Compiler’s Notes, H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. VII, 136.

54 Ibid., 137

55 The West Church, Boston. Commemorative Services on the Fiftieth Anniversary of its Present Ministry… (Boston: Damrell and Upham, 1887). 68-70.

56 Christy Campbell, The Maharajah’s Box. (Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook, 2002), 254-255.

In April 1882, Olcott lectured at Calcutta Town Hall on his first visit to Bengal, more than three years after his arrival in Bombay. He was introduced to this fateful lecture audience by Mittra, now a TS Vice-President and President of the Calcutta branch. Olcott attributed to Indian Mahatmas all the early paranormal wonders he witnessed in New York, and dated his desire to move to India to his earliest acquaintance with Blavatsky in Vermont. “She soon proved to me that, in comparison with even the chela of an Indian Mahatma, the authorities I had been accustomed to look up to knew absolutely nothing… I began to count the years, the months, the days, as they passed, for they were bringing me ever nearer the time when I should drag my body after the eager thought that had so long preceded it.” (39)

This account makes the move to India an inevitable destination of the TS even before it was founded, which conflicts with numerous accounts from other founding figures and even his own story of the fateful 1877 introduction to the Arya Samaj. As the alliance with Dayananda collapsed, so did his significance in Olcott’s explanation of his reasons coming to India: “During the three years when I was waiting to come to India, I had other visits from the Mahatmas, and they were not all Hindus or Cashmeris. I know some fifteen in all, and among them Copts, Tibetans, Chinese, Japanese, Siamese, a Hungarian, and a Cypriote.” (40)

Olcott’s visits from the Mahatmas have acquired the connotation of mysterious paranormal events through decades of Theosophical elaboration. But regardless of paranormal claims, as seen in Olcott’s description above, there was a remarkable series of encounters with international acquaintances who shared common interests. He mentions no Bengali Mahatmas, yet makes a long-term commitment to the Theosophists of Bengal, saying “I expect henceforth to spend at least two or three months of each year in Bengal…We have not the least intention of returning to our own countries to reside. India is our chosen home, the land of our adoption; and the Hindus are our dearest friends, if not our brothers.”(41)

In Old Diary Leaves, Olcott described his arrival in Calcutta for the first time and its aftermath:

Calcutta was my final stage on this roundabout tour of 1882. I was first entertained there by my excellent friends Colonel and Mrs. Gordon, and, later, by the Maharajah, Sir Jotendro Mohn Tagore, the premier Indian noble of the Metropolis…became his guest at his palatial Guest-House (Boituckhana) for the remainder of my stay in Calcutta. This gentleman is one of the courtliest, most cultured and estimable friends I have ever known. On the 4th, the Maharajah held a reception for me, to make me acquainted with the chief Indian gentlemen of the city. On the 5th, my lecture was given at the town hall to a tremendous audience…The beloved Bengali author and philanthropist, the late Babu Peary Chand Mittra, was my Chairman. H.P.B. joined me the next day at the Boituckhana, and that evening, at the same place, we organized the Bengal Theosophical Society, one of our best known Branches, with Babu Peary Chand Mittra as President. (42)

Blavatsky’s first mention of the Brahmo Samaj after her visit to Bengal was in the June 1882 Theosophist with an article “Hindu Theism” in which she introduced an article on Brahmo history:

“In 1838 the leadership fell into the hands of Babu Debendra Nath Tagore, a Bengali gentleman of high family, and of a sweetness of character and loftiness of aim equal to that of the late Raja. Primitive Brahmoism was first split into two, and, later, into three churches. The first and, it is claimed, the original, one is known as the Adi Brahmo Samaj, of which the now venerable and always equally revered Babu Debendra Nath Tagore is theoretically, but Babu Raj Narain Bose practically—owing to the retirement of the former to a life of religious seclusion at Mussooree— the chief…the second Samaj comprises a small group which has followed the lead of Babu Kashab Chander Sen, down the slippery road to the quagmire of Infallibility, Direct Revelation, and Apostolic Succession…The Third branch of the original Brahmo Samaj of Ram Mohun Roy is called the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, and headed by Pandit Sivanath Shastri, who is a gentleman of unblemished character, modest disposition, a well-read Sanskritist, and a good though not exceptional, orator…In conclusion, we must note the coincidence that, upon the very heel of the Swami’s defection, comes a most cordial greeting from Babu Raj Narain Bose, leader of another Hindu society, and a man whose approbation and friendship is worth having…” (43)

In May 1883, in “The Chosen `Vehicles of Election’” she protested that “Brahmoism proper, as taught by Raja Ram Mohun Roy, or the respected and venerable Babu Debendranath Tagore, we have never ridiculed nor deprecated, nor ever will.” (44) The following month, Blavatsky published an article in the Theosophist which commented on an article from the previous month’s number by Bose on “Essential Religion” in a friendly but critical tone. This echoed the tone of the original criticism, in which Bose pointed out that Theosophy was as much a propagandistic religion as Brahmoism despite claims to the contrary. In his response Bose wrote “I am not therefore unfriendly to Theosophy, but I have a word of humble advice to offer to the disinterested leaders of the Theosophical movement, for whom I entertain every feeling of respect. The more they keep Theosophy and Theology distinct from each other, and the less they mix up their personal opinions of the subject of religion with their legitimate province, Theosophy, the better.“ (45) Blavatsky replied that “The saintly characters of Ram Mohun Roy, Debendra Nath Tagore, and a few others of his colleagues, have not won the Hindus from their exoteric worship—we think, because neither of them has had the Yogi power to prove practically the fact of there being a spiritual side to nature. (46) A further exchange appeared in the December 1883 number of The Theosophist, in which Blavatsky commented that “We never spoke of the `Adi Brahmo Samaj,’ of which we know next to nothing, but of the spurious Brahmo Samaj calling itself New Dispensation where all is to be taken on faith and the Universal Infallibility is claimed to have taken its Headquarters in the person of Babu Keshub Chunder Sen who has now come to comparing himself publicly—nay with identifying himself—with Jesus Christ.” (47) Describing all branches of Brahmos combined as having fewer than 150,000 members, Blavatsky adds “we were told in Calcutta by a near relative of the Babu—that the direct followers, or the apostles of Babu Keshub could be counted on the ten fingers— they do not exceed fifty men.” (48) But while the New Dispensation was subject to relentless scorn in Blavatsky’s writings, Mittra was always praised: “There are a few converts to modern Spiritualism, such as Babu Peary Chand Mittra, whose great personal purity of life would make such intercourse harmless for him, even were he not indifferent to physical phenomena, holding but to the purely spiritual subjective side of such communion.” (49)

While Blavatsky’s first trip to Bengal to promote the TS among the Brahmos in April 1882 was of short-term import, her second trip, when she visited Darjeeling and the Ghum monastery six months later, had a more lasting significance. She traveled in the company of several Indian chelas, including Keshava Pillai who was instructed in a letter from Koot Hoomi to adopt the name Chandra Cusho and the attire of a Gelugpa monk. The name Chandra may be a nod to Sarat Chandra Das (1849-1917), a Bengali scholar of Tibetan Buddhism who was in Shigatse at the time of Blavatsky’s trip to Darjeeling, in the company of a Sikkimese lama named Ugyen Gyatso. In the December 1883 Theosophist, she referred to “Ten-Dub Ughien, the lama next to our Mahatma—and the chief and Guide of his chelas on their travels.”(50) Ugyen Gyatso and Sarat Chandra Das returned from their trip to Shigatse in December 1882, and Colonel Olcott visited Das in Darjeeling in 1885 and 1887 and wrote of him as a “wonderful explorer of Tibet” who had returned with “priceless MSS. and printed books.” (51)

39 Henry S. Olcott, Theosophy, Religion, and Occult Science (London: Redway, 1885), 122-124.

40 Ibid., 124.

41 Ibid., 119.

42 Henry Steel Olcott, Old Diary Leaves, Third Series (Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1972), 340-341.

43 H.P. Blavatsky, “Hindu Theism,”The Theosophist, Vol. III, No. 9, June 1882, reprinted in H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. IV (Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House, 1969), 109-111.

44 H.P. Blavatsky, “The Chosen `Vessels of Election;” The Theosophist, Vol. IV, No. 8, May, 1883, reprinted in H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. IV, 414-415.

45 Babu Raj Narain Bose, “The Essentials of Religion,” The Theosophist, Vol. IV, No. 11, August, 1883, reprinted in H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Volume V (Los Angeles: Philosophical Research Society, 1950), 99.

 46 H.P. Blavatsky, “Editor’s Note,” Ibid., p. 100.

 47 Babu Raj Narain Bose, “The God-Idea,” The Theosophist, Vol. V, No. 3, December 1883, in H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. VI, 12.

 48 “H.P. Blavatsky, Editor’s Note, “Ananda Bai’s Reception,” The Theosophist, Vol. V, No 3, Supplement to December, 1883, reprinted in H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. VI, 68.

49 H.P. Blavatsky, “Tibetan Teachings,” Lucifer, Vol. XV, Nos. 85-86, September and October, 1894, in H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. VI, 96.

 50 H.P. Blavatsky, “Editor’s Note,” Preo Nath Banerjee, “Existence of the Himalayan Mahatmas,” The Theosophist, Vol. V., No. 3, December, 1883, reprinted in H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. VI, 38.

 51 Henry Steel Olcott, Old Diary Leaves, Third Series, 4-6.

This is the second of the subdivisions of the chapter “Theosophy in the Bengal Renaissance.” Noteworthy for students of the Brotherhood of Light Lessons or readers of the History of the Adepts books is that Mittra (Mitra) was held in high esteem by Alexander Wilder and Thomas Moore Johnson as well as by Emma Hardinge Britten and James Martin Peebles. The former were more Platonists than occultists and the latter more Spiritualists than Theosophists– but the lines were always blurred in the 19th century. KPJ

Peary Chand Mittra was the first Bengali member of the TS, and the third Indian admitted, member #135 in the Adyar membership books with an entry date of December 9, 1877.

Blavatsky referred to Mittra in a note recorded in her scrapbook next to a clipping from the London Spiritualist of Jan 25, 1878 of a letter to editor from Peebles, “who is attempting to prove that there are Hindu Spiritualists” to which she added a note commenting “Ask Peary Chand Mittra whether he would accept `materialized’ spooks with sweating and corpse-stinking bodies for his dear `departed ones.’”(26) In The Theosophical Enlightenment, Joscelyn Godwin suggests that Blavatsky and Olcott first made contact with Mittra through Peebles, which is credible in light of their known friendship.(27) Although Mittra is known in the West as an Indian Theosophist and Spiritualist, in his homeland his reputation is as a pivotal figure in the Bengal Renaissance who was acquainted with most of its leaders. In Awakening, a recent survey of the century-long revival of Bengali literary culture, Subrata Dasgupta describes “the ultimate and supreme product” of the Bengal Renaissance as a “cross-cultural mentality, let us call it the Indo- Western mind.”(28) Involvement in the TS was the ultimate expression of Mittra’s Indo-Western mind. Indeed the entire Bengal Renaissance was encouraged by the literary pursuits of Westerners living in Bengal in the late 18th century, and flourished with the mutual interest of Bengalis writing in English and Englishmen learning Bengali.

Mittra features prominently in Dasgupta’s study as “a librarian, businessman, and literary man- at-large, but most famously, under the nom de plume of Tekchand Thakur, the author of Alaler Gharer Dulal…regarded as the first novel in Bengali.”(29) With Radhanath Sikda he “established a monthly Bengali magazine which ran for three years.”(30) A Society for the Acquisition of General Knowledge, founded in 1838, hosted Mittra as a lecturer on a variety of themes, and he was subsequently involved in the creation of the University of Calcutta. Mittra was a founder of the British Indian Association and in 1868 became a member of the Bengal Legislative Council. All these developments illustrate Dasgupta’s thesis that “the Bengal Renaissance’s richest production was the creation of a cross-cultural mentality, a capability to think, perceive, and create in a manner that involved the melding of two or more traditions seemingly unconnected and even contradictory…the `Indo-Western mind’, resulting from a constellation of encounters of all sorts between Bengal and the West…”(31)

The first details about the Brahmo Samaj in Blavatsky’s writings came in an 1878 article about the Arya Samaj: “in October, 1839… Debendra Nath Tagore founded the Tattvabodhoni-Sabha (or Society for the Knowledge of Truth), which lasted for twenty years, and did much to arouse the energies and form the principles of the young church of the Brahmo-Samaj. We now find it with Samajes established in many provinces and cities. At least, we learn that in May 1877, “fifty Samajes have notified their adhesion to the Society and eight of them have appointed their representatives.”(32) The rest of the article was devoted to the Arya Samaj, and for the next four years the TS Founders would pursue alliances with that organization and with the Sinhalese Buddhists. Their travels to northern and western India and Ceylon occupied much of their time and energy in 1879 and 1880. It was only in 1882, the year in which the Arya Samaj and the TS became permanently alienated, that they would visit Bengal and strengthen their ties with the Brahmo Samaj. The first mention of a Bengal Renaissance leader in Blavatsky’s writings in India was found in an American Spiritualist publication, the Banner of Light, where she wrote that “the frequent statements of Dr. Peebles to the effect that this country is full of native Spiritualists are—how shall I say it? a little too hasty, and exaggerated…Dr. Peebles quotes from the letter of an esteemed Hindu gentleman, Mr. Peary Chand Mitra, of Calcutta…We all know that Mr. Mitra is a Spiritualist, but what does it prove?”(33) In an unpublished fragment found in Adyar Archives and published in the Collected Writings as “Theosophy— the Essence of Philosophy,” dated 1879, she wrote: “and here, in the present century, we will find ourselves face to face with, and recognize as Brother Theosophists, such original thinkers as Swami Naratan, Ram Mohun Roy, Brahma charya Bawa, Keshub Chunder Sen, and finally, last, though by far not least on our catalogue— Swami Dayanada Sawaswati, the learned Pandit, eminent Vedic scholar and elocutionist, and the founder of the Aryan Reformation.”34 Although Mittra’s acquaintance with the TS dates to 1877, he took four years to contribute directly to Theosophical literature. In a March 1881 article for the Theosophist, Blavatsky commented “Ever since we came to India friends in Europe and America have been asking us to tell them something about the Brahmo Samaj. We have been promised such an exposition of Brahmoism more than once by Brahmo friends.”(35)

In 1882, Mittra was elected president of the TS branch in Calcutta, and Blavatsky wrote about him as “certainly the most spiritual Theosophist and most theosophic Spiritualist we have ever met.”(36) Answering questions about the suitability of a Spiritualist president of a Theosophical branch, she wrote that “many excellent persons are both, and none need alter his faith.”(37) Emma Hardinge Britten’s Nineteenth Century Miracles (published in 1884 but in a passage apparently written during Mittra’s lifetime) called Mittra a highly esteemed Indian Spiritualist: “Amongst the recent literary productions which bear testimony to the spread of the spiritual faith in India, no writings are more highly esteemed than those of Peary Chand Mittra. Besides a number of excellent magazine articles contributed by this gentleman to the different Spiritual periodicals of England and America, Mr. Mittra has written an interesting brochure entitled `Spiritual Stray Leaves,’ and a still more profound work on `the Soul; it’s [sic] nature and development.”(38)

23 Stainton Moses, “The Early Story of the Theosophical Society,” Light, Vol. XII, No. 602Jul 23, 1892, 356.

24 Letters of H. P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1 (Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House, 2003), 361.

25 Krishna Singh Arya and P.D. Shastri, Swami Dayananda Sarasvati: A Study of His Life and Work (Delhi: Manohar, 1987), 17-18.

26 H.P. Blavatsky, H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. 1 Second edition. (Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House, 1977), 282.

27 Joscelyn Godwin, The Theosophical Enlightenment (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994), 327. This book devotes several psges to Brahmoism, far more than other works addressing TS history, but concentrates on the period prior to TS/Brahmo contact.

28 Subrata Dasgupta, Awakening (Noida, U.P.: Random House India, 2011), 3.

29 Ibid., 178.

30 Ibid., 179.

31 Ibid., 431.

32 “The Arya Samaj,” New York Echo, June 2, 1878 in H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings Vol. I, 381.

33 H.P. Blavatsky, “Echoes rom India, ” Banner of Light, XLVI no 4, October 18, 1879, in H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. II (Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House, n.d.).

34 H.P. Blavatsky, “Theosophy, the Essence of Philosophy,” H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. II, 209.

35 H.P. Blavatsky, “The Brahmo Samaj,” Theosophist 2:6, March 1881 reprinted in H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. III (Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House, 1968), 55.

36 H.P. Blavatsky, H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. IV (Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1969), 170.

37 Ibid.

38 Emma Hardinge Britten, Nineteenth Century Miracles (New York: Lovell, 1884), 317.

Hurrychund Chintamon

1870-1877 Initial Contacts (from Theosophy in the Bengal Renaissance, Chapter 10 of Imagining the East)

Old Diary Leaves describes a visitor who recognized Bombay Arya Samaj leader Moolji Thackersey (d1880) in a photograph on the wall of the New York apartment that Colonel Olcott (1832-1907) shared with Madame Blavatsky. “One evening in the year 1877 an American traveller, who had recently been in India, called…he did know Moolji Thackersey and had recently met him in Bombay.(3) This photograph had been allegedly taken on a transatlantic voyage from New York to Liverpool in 1870, where Olcott met Moolji Thackersey and another Indian traveler named Tulsidas Jadarjee, five years before the formation of the Arya Samaj. Hurrychund Chintamon, with whom Olcott began corresponding after Thackersey introduced them, was the second Indian entered in the Adyar Membership records now available online from The Art Archive. The first, Jadarjee, #120 in the entries, precedes #123 Chintamon and has been considerably more elusive. Herbert Monachesi (d1900) gave his name as Tulsidas Jadarjee in an October 6, 1875 New York Mercury article “Proselyters from India,” claiming that Thackersey and his travel companion had been on a Hindu missionary journey to the West.(4) Newspaper accounts in New York (November 12, 1869), Louisville (November 20, reporting their presence in Chicago), New Orleans (December 3), Macon (December 24, reporting their presence in Mobile), Charleston (December 26), and Philadelphia (January 6, 1870) trace their travels around the United States on a business mission to study the cotton business in hopes of establishing direct trade. The New York Times for January 13, 1870 included the names “Moolja Thackersy, Toolsidas Jadarzee,” and “Colonel. Hy. S. Olcott” as having departed the previous day on the steamship Java, bound from New York to Liverpool.(5)

James Peebles (1822-1922) has been suggested as the possible visitor of Olcott’s anecdote, but he was out of the country throughout 1877 and thus less likely as the visitor in question than a heretofore overlooked colleague of Olcott, David E. Dudley, MD.(6)  Like Olcott, Peebles did make a journey to England in 1870 that led to acquaintance with Indians who became pivotal in the establishment of the TS in Asia. Two years later his travels in India made him a catalyst in the relations between the Brahmo Samaj and western Spiritualists. His acquaintance with the Brahmo Samaj had begun in 1868 when Keshub Chunder Sen (1838-1884) wrote a letter to a Free Thought Convention, in which “Dr. J. M. Peebles and Miss Lizzie Doten (1827-1913) spoke for the Spiritualists…there was also an inspiring letter from Keshub Chunder Sen, the great leader of the Brahmo Somaj movement in India.”(7) In 1870, Sen wrote a note to Peebles while both were in London, leading to a meeting about which Peebles later wrote: “This educated and gentlemanly missionary from India, attired in the vesture of his native land, made quite a sensation when reaching the great metropolis of her Majesty’s domains… we learned that he was well acquainted with Peary Chand Mittra, and other leading Spiritualists of India. Multitudes in this distant country accept the central thought of Spiritualism; that is, intercourse with departed spirits.”(8) Sen wrote of the meeting in a diary entry: “Tuesday, 26th April. Mr. Peebles, United States Consul in Asia Minor, calls on me with a friend of his who, it appears, is a spiritualist. They are both very liberal-minded, and they most warmly sympathize with me in my desire and efforts to promote theism. Mr. Peebles asks me to visit America where he will be going in next June. He is enthusiastic about it.”(9)

James Martin Peebles

In his 1875 travel memoir Around the World Peebles also describes meeting Brahmo Samajis in Calcutta, one of whom had translated Emma Hardinge’s Spiritual Commandments into Bengali and distributed it as a pamphlet.10 In 1871, Hardinge (not yet Britten) had written a glowing three page preface to the first biography of Peebles, The Spiritual Pilgrim by J. O. Barrett (1823-1898). The following year he met the Cairo Spiritualist circle in which Blavatsky had been involved.(11) In light of these circumstances, we can surmise that Peebles vouched for Blavatsky’s Spiritualist credentials to Olcott, and endorsed her phenomena that are described in People From the Other World. This 1875 book describes the séances at the Eddy brothers’ farmhouse in Vermont where Olcott first met Blavatsky. Peebles also is featured in the narrative as a man who “is well known as an eloquent speaker and scholarly writer upon Spiritualism, but that doesn’t imply that he is either a fool or knave.”(12)

Henry S. Olcott

Although in 1874 Peebles had been present at the time of the first acquaintance of Blavatsky and Olcott in Vermont, he kept distance from her thereafter. Adyar membership records indicate that Peebles was not an early TS member. In fact he condemned Blavatsky and supported her accusers the Coulombs in 1884 during the Society for Psychical Research investigation of the TS. Near the end of his life he repeated his condemnation of Blavatsky in Five Journeys Around the World (1910), writing that “Continental, English, and American Spiritualism and Spiritualists were shamefully misrepresented in India a number of years ago by Madame Blavatsky and a number of her biologized subordinates.”(13) Clearly, Olcott was chief among the “biologized subordinates” yet in the same book Peebles wrote “Adyar is not only restful, inviting to study and meditation, but the centre of Theosophical culture, research, and authority for the enlightened Theosophical world. Happy were the days and weeks that I spent in this palace of books, companioned with Col. Olcott, the only living founder of modern Theosophy!”(14) After Blavatsky’s death he finally joined the Theosophists in 1894 and was on collegial terms with Olcott on a return trip to South Asia three years later.(15)

Emma Hardinge Britten

Art Magic and Ghost Land, published in 1876, were the first expressions of interest in India in books by a TS founder. Emma Hardinge Britten (1823-1899) has been largely written out of the early TS narrative and deprived of her rightful status as a founder. Although she has been perceived in terms of the polarities East vs. West and Spiritualism vs. Theosophy, she wrote as a Theosophical Spiritualist and a reconciler of Eastern and Western traditions. In Art Magic she wrote that “the same imperishable sources of knowledge from which the ancients derived their opinions and framed their systems of Theosophy, are open to the students of the nineteenth century in all their fullness,”(16) and eight years later in Nineteenth Century Miracles she asserted that “’Theosophy’ and `Occultism,’ are terms of world-wide import.”(17) Despite her open break with the TS due to its hostility to Spiritualism, in 1884 Britten still maintained that “India has been the cradle of all known theological beliefs…the actual marvels wrought by religious ascetics, in the realm of matter and force, have opened up a new and highly suggestive page in the study of Occultism and Psychology.”(18) Isis Unveiled, published in 1877, refers to Bengal briefly in each of its two volumes. In Volume I, Blavatsky gives a first-person narrative of a “Magical Séance in Bengal,” in which she describes having made “hundreds of experiments with cats, dogs, monkeys of various kinds, and once, with a tame tiger” in the Western Ghat mountains, and then describes witnessing a tiger, a lion-monkey, and an oriole being mesmerized all in the same “séance” attended by nine persons in Bengal.(19) In the second volume, she describes an encounter with snake charmers by a British “Captain B” before recounting another tale of mesmerizing a tiger, this time in a village near Dacca.(20)

Swami Dayananda Sarasvati

Correspondence between the Theosophists and the Bombay Arya Samaj began in November 1877 when Olcott contacted Moolji Thackersey. In December, Blavatsky wrote for the first time to Peary Chand Mittra (1813-1883), asking “in what pagodas are the records preserved? Where are these temples situated and what are their names, and how old is each known to be?”(21)

Although Blavatsky corresponded with the Arya Samaj before making contact with the Brahmos, in The White Buddhist, Steven Prothero notes a letter written June 5, 1877 from Olcott to Mittra which thus occurred months prior to TS contact with Dayananda and his disciples.(22) Peary Chand Mittra was the first Bengali member of the TS, and the third Indian admitted, member #135 in the Adyar membership books with an entry date of December 9, 1877. Although Olcott would later claim that his motivation to move to India predated creation of the TS, an 1876 letter to Stainton Moses (1839-1892) shows him resistant to Blavatsky’s desire to relocate to India. She had been convinced that criticisms by D.D. Home (1833-1886) had destroyed her credibility in Europe and America. This letter, published in Light in 1892, seeks the assistance of Moses’ spirit guide Imperator:

“I wish you would ask Imperator, with my compliments, if he can’t do something, in the psychological way, to prevent Madame Blavatsky from going to India…She is a changed woman these past few weeks. She is moody, reserved, and apparently desperate. The calumnies circulated in Europe and here have cut her so deeply; she feels such a disgust with our world; she so longs for her sacred Ganges, and the society of her Brethren, that I am afraid we will lose her.”(23)

Daniel Dunglas Home

In November 1877, after the decision had been made to move to India, Blavatsky wrote a letter to A.N. Aksakov (1832-1903) in Russia that confirms Home’s hostility as a factor: “It is for this that I am going for ever to India, and for very shame and vexation I want to go where no one will know my name. Home’s malignity has ruined me for ever in Europe.(24) Perhaps what changed Olcott’s mind were Blavatsky’s elaborate claims on behalf of Swami Dayananda. She had portrayed him as part of her Great White Brotherhood of adept sponsors, and Hurrychund Chintamon had also encouraged Olcott’s religious adherence to the Swami. On February 18, 1878, Olcott wrote through Chintamon to Dayananda, “we come to your feet as children to a parent, and say, ‘Look at us, our teacher; tell us what we ought to do. Give us your counsel and your aid.”(25)

This sequence of events revises the traditional understanding of the TS move to India. Rapprochement between western Spiritualists and the Brahmo Samaj was behind the scenes of the early TS through Peebles, Sen and Mittra during the writing of Britten’s Ghost Land, well before the connection to Swami Dayananda developed. Theosophical tales about Indian missionaries to the West were likely derived from Brahmo activities and orientation. Arya Samajis cared no more about European contacts than did Tibetan Buddhists, but Bengalis were more global in perspective and did send missionaries to the West. The first to play this role in the early Victorian period was Brahmo Samaj founder Ram Mohan Roy; most visible in the 1880s was his great grandson Mohini Chatterji (1858-1936).

(endnote numbers continue from the previous installment)

3Henry S. Olcott, Old Diary Leaves (Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1974, 1975) Vol. I, 395.

4 Josephine Ransom, Short History of the Theosophical Society (Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1938), 98.

5 “Passengers Sailed,” New York Times, January 13, 1870, 8.

6 Dudley’s role in the TS move to India is discussed in my editorial foreword to the 2021 reprint of Chintamon’s 1874 Commentary on the Text of the Bhagavad-Gita. In The Dawning of the Theosophical Movement (Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House, 1977), Michael Gomes noted that the American traveler “is usually identified as Dr. James M. Peebles” and asserts that Peebles had indeed met Thackersey, but cautions that Peebles was out of the U.S. throughout 1877. In 1980, Marion Meade reported as fact that Peebles was the visitor; the most recent book to name Peebles as the visitor to Olcott is Diane Sasson, Yearning for the New Age (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012), 57. My The Masters Revealed variously asserted this as a possibility and a fact, despite noting Michael Gomes’s objections re chronology. Joscelyn Godwin and Gary Lachman have more cautiously and accurately described this as a possibility rather than a fact.

7 Proceedings of the Fortieth Annual Meeting (Boston: Free Religious Association of America, 1907), 22.

8 James M. Peebles, Around the World (Boston: Colby and Rich, 1875), 251.

9 Keshub Chunder Sen, Diary in England (Calcutta: Brahmo Tract Society, 1894), 79.

10 Peebles, Around the World (Boston: Colby and Rich, 1875), 252.

11 Edward Whipple, A Biography of James Martin Peebles, M.D., A.M. (Battle Creek: The Author, 1901), 529

12 Henry S. Olcott, People From the Other World, (Rutland: Tuttle, 1972), 308.

13 James M. Peebles, Five Journeys Around the World (Battle Creek: Peebles Publishing Company, 1910), 432.

14 Ibid, 419.

15 At this point a timeline may be helpful in clarifying Peebles’s travels in relation to those of others. 1) 1870— Olcott meets Thackersey and Jadarjee en route to London; Peebles meets Keshub Chnder Sen in London. 2) 1871— Britten writes preface to the first biography of Peebles. 3) 1872—Peebles meets P.C. Mittra and other Brahmo Samajis in Calcutta, and visits Cairo and learns of Blavatsky who has left for Odessa, or perhaps met her before her departure as evidence is conflicting. 4) 1874 Peebles is at the Chittenden VT home of the Eddy Brothers when Olcott and Blavatsky met there.

16 Emma Hardinge Britten, Art Magic (New York: The Author, 1876), 29.

17 Emma Hardinge Britten, Nineteenth Century Miracles (New York: Lovell, 1884), 304.

18 Ibid., 294

19 H.P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 1976), Vol. I, 467-468.

20 Ibid., Vol. II, 622-623. The otherwise unidentified “Captain B” may be a veiled reference to Richard F. Burton, who referred to snake charmers in several of his travel narratives and who joined the TS in late 1878.

21 Letters of H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. I (Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House, 2003), 391.Blavatsky was seeking information on the oldest astronomical calculations preserved in India.

22 Stephen Prothero, The White Buddhist (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 206.

 23 Stainton Moses, “The Early Story of the Theosophical Society,” Light, Vol. XII, No. 602Jul 23, 1892, 356.

 24 Letters of H. P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1 (Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House, 2003), 361.

 25 Krishna Singh Arya and P.D. Shastri, Swami  Dayananda Sarasvati: A Study of His Life and Work (Delhi: Manohar, 1987), 17-18.

This is the opening of my chapter “Theosophy in the Bengal Renaissance” which is chapter ten of Imagining the East from Oxford University Press. In future blog posts I will add illustrations of relevant people and places, in five more segments of the chapter. I would like to acknowledge the tremendous assistance of editors Tim Rudbog and Erik Sand who helped me integrate several different biographical profiles and kept pushing me to explain the meaning of the facts I dug up, making connections between different biographies and not just reporting them individually. They also helped break the chapter down into digestible sub sections which I will post separately as series of blog entries adding illustrations not in the book from Oxford University Press. 

INTRODUCTION

The Bengal Renaissance was a movement of religious awakening, literary creativity, political consciousness, and social reform, emerging in the late eighteenth century and ending with the death of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), first Indian winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.¹ A little known aspect of the Theosophical movement is its early and continuing association with the Bengal Renaissance, and the strong interest shown in this alliance by H.P. Blavatsky (1831- 1891). Her books show little trace of this involvement, but her journalistic writings show her to be a keen observer of the middle phase of the movement in the 1880s and especially of the three factions into which the Brahmo movement (which was inaugurated in 1823 as the Calcutta Unitarian Committee, renamed in 1828 as the Brahmo Sabha, and again as the Brahmo Samaj in 1843) had divided. This chapter examines the initial TS contacts with Bengal which developed while the organization was still based in New York, and describes the cooperative relationships with Bengalis that developed after Olcott and Blavatsky’s move to India. These relationships were largely with members of the Brahmo Samaj, which according to historian David Kopf “played a crucial role in the genesis and development of every major religious, social, and political movement in India from 1820 to 1930.” ² The most prominent Bengali Theosophist, Mohini Chatterji (1858-1936), began as a fervent disciple of the Theosophical Mahatmas, but after leaving India in 1884 he became a dissident and then an ex-Theosophist before returning in 1887. By the early twentieth century, Theosophy was losing favor among young Bengali intellectuals like himself. An eloquent explanation of this decline is found in posthumously published writings of Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950) who, like Chatterji, was a descendant of Brahmo Samaj leaders.

The success of Tamra Lucid’s Making the Ordinary Extraordinary has been a joy to behold. In  retrospect, having seen the first draft I could tell immediately that this story had to be told and Tamra was the person who had to tell it.  The subtitle refers to “Occult LA in the 1980s,” which describes a period of my life when I briefly crossed paths with Manly P. Hall as we were both presenters at the Secret Doctrine Centenary in Pasadena.  He opened the Saturday afternoon session, October 29, 1988 at two pm and I followed at three with one intervening speaker. Many Theosophists were fans of his Secret Teachings of All Ages, and his wife Marie’s obsession with Bruton Parish Church made her notorious in Tidewater Virginia.  Because Hall was an occultist contemporary of Edgar Cayce and Elbert Benjamine, his name was also familiar in the Association for Research and Enlightenment and The Church of Light.

“I could not put it down” is a compliment I can rarely pay to books I read for historical information and insight.  Fiction can have that effect, but so can memoirs when the author’s voice is compelling.  Tamra covers the emotional rollercoaster of the Philosophical Research Society’s turmoil, from comedy at the beginning to tragedy at the end.  Only an eyewitness account can convey such a situation from the inside. The talent that most impresses me is to write a first person memoir that carries a story from start to middle to finish never losing sight of the narrative arc.

The Magic of the Orphic Hymns is a new translation by Tamra Lucid and Ronnie Pontiac that is now listed as “in stock” by Inner Traditions International. pre-ordered it and await my copy next week:

The Magic of the Orphic Hymns (innertraditions.com)

Here is an informative review of Making the Ordinary Extraordinary:

Making the Ordinary Extraordinary, by Tamra Lucid

Of the 2022 titles mentioned in the previous post, I have only just received the Green book The Religious Revolution, and many of the 2021 and 2020 titles are very expensive so I can only cite them from free excerpts online. But I have now read the works by Lucid, Della Subin, Urban, Dann, and Kramer, while Sites is next after Green. (PS Hokanson arrived today, Friday July 7.) These will be featured in future blog posts. The value of seeing whose books cite mine is they rarely say anything about me but just the adept biographical subjects in my books– in very interesting ways. [Out of 25, one is very flattering and one is very insulting but 23 just use the research without flattering or insulting the author which is what I want.]

2021 Citations in Books:

Fictional Practice: Magic, Narration, and the Power of  Imagination Page 171

Bernd-Christian Otto – 2021 Brill

Esoteric Transfers and Constructions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam… Page 286

Mark Sedgwick, ‎Francesco Piraino · 2021 Palgrave

Secrecy: Silence, Power, and Religion – Page 223

Hugh B. Urban · 2021 University of Chicago Press

Making the Ordinary Extraordinary: My Seven Years in Occult Los Angeles… Acknowledgments

Tamra Lucid · 2021 Inner Traditions International

Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age – Page 538

Olav Hammer · 2021 Brill

The Subtle Body: A Genealogy – Page 224

Simon Cox · 2021 Oxford University Press

Accidental Gods

Anna Della Subin- 2021 Metropolitan Books

Sino-Tibetan Buddhism across the Ages – Page 168

Ester Bianchi, ‎Weirong Shen · 2021 Brill

Die orientalische Wende der Theosophischen Gesellschaft.. Page 508

Ulrich Harlass · 2021 de Gruyter

Das Chakra-System: Der Schlüssel zum Verständnis des Menschenbooks.                                                   

Kurt Leland · 2021 Aquamarin-Verlag

Freemasonry and Rudolf Steiner…Page 262

N.V. P. Franklin, 2021 Temple Lodge

Mysterious Travelers: Steve Ditko and the Search for a New Liberal Identity … Page 264

Zack Kruse · 2021 University Press of Mississippi

2020:

Kabbalah in America: Ancient Lore in the New World – Page 110

Brian Ogren · 2020 New York University Press

The Reception of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Britain: East Comes West – Page 187

Brendan McNamara · 2020 Brill

Enchanted New York: A Journey along Broadway through Manhattan’s Magical Past… – Page 324

Kevin Dann · 2020 New York University Press

Inhaling Spirit: Harmonialism, Orientalism, and the Western  Roots of Modern Yoga…Page

Anya P. Foxen · 2020 Oxford University Press

The Return of Holy Russia: Apocalyptic History, Mystical Awakening, and the Struggle for the Soul of the World

Gary Lachman · 2020 Inner Traditions International

Theosophy across Boundaries: Transcultural and International Perspectives on a Modern Esoteric Movement, endnotes

Hans Martin Krämer, ‎Julian Strube · 2020 SUNY Press

Searching for the Spirit: Theosophy in Australia, 1879-1939

Jill Roe · 2020 · ‎Wakefield Press

Sun Ra’s Chicago: Afrofuturism and the City

William Sites – University of Chicago Press 2020

As we approach Summer Solstice this blog will turn over a new leaf and focus solely on the early twentieth century Brotherhood of Light and Church of Light as sources of clues about associations and influences. From my earliest books to my latest editorial projects, the time frame 1875-1900 has almost defined the scope of research, although it involves many countries and different esoteric and spiritual groups. This article from the Los Angeles Evening Citizen Times appeared April 19, 1941. It came as a revelation to me that Elizabeth was a speaker at a Masonic lodge in Los Angeles, and a new puzzle to solve– who was C. N. Redmond her fellow speaker? Another news article describes her visit to Ohio on behalf of The Church of Light. This appeared in the Mansfield News-Journal on August 13, 1941.– KPJ

Editing to add– this Redmond seems to be an impostor, taking the name of a real Rev. C. N. Redmond. No matter how much I try to avoid discussing aliases of impostors, they keep popping up.

Ronnie has given many good interviews since American Metaphysical Religion was published, explaining his research to interviewers approaching the book from different points of view. Here is a recent one with a psychological author.

Patrick’s contacts with the Johnson Library and Museum in Osceola, Missouri resulted in the greatest find of 19thc correspondence I have ever heard about in the realm of esotericism. We both had chapters in the same Oxford University Press book; his based directly on the Johnson correspondence but mine only indirectly related. His chapter is now available online here, a gold mine of info for anyone interested in the pre-history of the Brotherhood of Light.

https://www.academia.edu/97678012/_The_Real_Pure_Yog_Yoga_in_the_Early_Theosophical_Society_and_the_Hermetic_Brotherhood_of_Luxor