Sir Francis Bacon is sometimes spoken of by students of Theosophy as having been a 
great Adept, Theosophist, Occultist, even as being Christian Rosenkreuz, founder of the Rosicrucians, himself, and as having a connection with the Brotherhood or Lodge of those Masters who are behind the modern Theosophical Movement.
It is also sometimes claimed that Bacon was the real author of most, if not all, of the plays of William Shakespeare.
These ideas are widely accepted in some groups, primarily the followers of the pseudo-theosophical distortions of such people as C. W. Leadbeater, Annie Besant, Alice Bailey, and Benjamin Creme.
Theosophists who study and respect H. P. Blavatsky and the real Mahatmas ought to acquaint themselves with the actual Theosophical position – on this, as on all other matters – as it appears to be completely different to the above and to contradict such notions.
Is Francis Bacon praised and revered by HPB and the Trans-Himalayan Initiates? Far from it!
“The immorality or virtue of a theosophical leader no more affects the truth of theosophical ideas, than the mendaciousness and dishonesty of Francis, Lord Bacon, do the intellectual value of the contents of his opus magnum.” (H. P. Blavatsky, “Our Third Volume” article)
“Lord Bacon used to fall down senseless at the beginning of every lunar eclipse and returned to consciousness but when it was over.” (HPB, “Whence the Name “Lunatic”?” article)
“All denial and ridicule notwithstanding, the Occultists will maintain the claim, and simply for this reason: from Bacon down to our modern Royal Society, we have a too long period, full of the most ludicrous mistakes made by Science, to warrant our believing in modern scientific assumptions rather than in the denials of our Teachers.” (HPB, “The Secret Doctrine” Vol. 2, p. 439)
“Bacon was one of the first to strike the key-note of materialism, not only by his inductive method (renovated from ill-digested Aristotle), but by the general tenor of his writings. He inverts the order of mental Evolution when saying that “the first Creation of God was the light of the sense; the last was the light of the reason; and his Sabbath work ever since is the illumination of the Spirit.” It is just the reverse.” (HPB, “The Secret Doctrine” Vol. 1, p. 481)
“Bacon, for inst: whom a poet called –
“The greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind” –
“might reappear in his next incarnation as a greedy money-getter, with extraordinary intellectual capacities. But the moral and spiritual qualities of the previous Bacon would also have to find a field in which their energies could expand themselves. Devachan is such a field.” (Master K.H.)
The same Master seems to suggest that Bacon’s prowess – and Aristotle’s too! – was primarily mental and intellectual rather than spiritual, when he states that a person “may be a Bacon or an Aristotle, in knowledge, and still not even make his current felt a feather’s weight by us, if his power is confined to the Manas.”
The Baconian theory of Shakespearean authorship first arose in the mid 19th century. That it was not endorsed or agreed with by HPB or her Teachers is indicated in “The Secret Doctrine” Vol. 2, p. 761, where They write:
“In our own day we witness the stupendous fact that such comparatively recent personages as Shakespeare and William Tell are all but denied, an attempt being made to show one to be a nom de plume, and the other a person who never existed. What wonder then, that the two powerful races – the Lemurians and the Atlanteans – have been merged into and identified, in time, with a few half mythical peoples, who all bore the same patronymic?”
On p. 12 of “Echoes from the Orient,” William Q. Judge informs us that “the Adepts assert that Shakspere was, unconsciously to himself, inspired by one of their own number.”
Thus Shakespeare wrote his own works but, without being aware of it, was inspired by one of the Adepts. It seems safe to say, in light of all the above, that this Adept was most definitely not Sir Francis Bacon.
T H E O S O P H Y 