PART I – KATHERINE TINGLEY AND WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

On 15th September 1887, H. P. Blavatsky – then living in London, where she remained until her death in 1891 – wrote to her closest colleague and friend William Q. Judge in New York, who had been one of the main co-founders of the Theosophical Society in 1875 alongside HPB and Colonel Henry S. Olcott. HPB wrote:

“Master [i.e. the Master M. or Mahatma Morya, the Guru of HPB and also of WQJ] has suggested . . . & therefore ordered (me alone) to telegraph to you . . . & ask you are you ready, or willing, or prepared to be elected for life [i.e. as President of the American Section of the Theosophical Society, a position Judge already held but not yet as “leader for life“]. This does not mean that you should be elected right away & to begin with. . . . Begin by being elected . . . for a year, and then . . . affairs & events may be turned off by unseen powers into such a groove that you will be unanimously elected for life – just as Olcott & I were – to go on with the work after our deaths [i.e. and thereby becoming official Leader of the whole of the Theosophical Society internationally; that this was HPB’s meaning and intention is confirmed in other letters, such as where she writes, “Judge is one of the Founders and a man who has ever been true to the Masters. . . . And Judge will be the President of the T.S. after our death or the T.S. will die with us,” and requests of Judge, “Take my place in America now & after I am gone – at Adyar.”]. 

“Do you understand what it means? It means that unless you consent, you will force me to a miserable life & a miserable death with the idea preying on my mind that there is an end of theosophy. That for several years I will not be able to help it on & stir its course, because I will have to act in a body which will have to be assimilated to the nirmanakaya; because even in Occultism there are such things as a failure, & a retardment, and a misfit. But you don’t understand me, I see. Judge, try to.”

In this last paragraph, HPB indicates that she intended to continue “helping on” and “stirring the course” of the Theosophical Society even after physical death, by “acting in a body” which would, however, first need “to be assimilated to the Nirmanakaya,” i.e. the mental-astral entity of the real, inner, ever-living “HPB,” a great Adept and Initiate in her, or his, own right. She envisioned this as taking “several years” to accomplish but acknowledged that even then, the attempt or process of occult assimilation may not succeed but could end up as a “failure” due to a “misfit” between her Nirmanakayic entity and the chosen vehicle. If WQJ were not to remain as Leader during those interim years, the whole Society could potentially collapse and the disembodied HPB would not be able to do much about it, until adequately and reliably assimilated with this as yet unnamed person. 

What we have just referred to is not a “reincarnation” of HPB but rather an “overshadowing” by her, for want of a better expression. This would obviously only be efficacious if an adult were the selected vehicle. If she were to either reincarnate in, or overshadow, a new human personality from its birth, so many more years – decades, even – would be taken up during which she would be unable to directly assist the Movement to which she had already given her heart’s blood.

In the book “Letters That Have Helped Me,” we find that in the September 1891 issue of William Judge’s magazine “The Path,” what we have just referred to was discussed in the “Tea Table Talks” feature, a mere 4 months after H. P. Blavatsky’s passing. Written by Judge’s trusted and esoterically insightful co-worker Julia Keightley (who wrote mostly under the pen names of Jasper Niemand and Julius) and referring to Judge here simply as “X,” it states:

“We were talking about H. P. B., and he [i.e. WQJ, or “X”] said that, so far as he understood, she (the Adept) expended an immense amount of energy — vis viva, you know — in holding together a body whose every molecule tended to disruption. In effect, just think of the cohesive force thus employed! — of the immense friction in brain centers already worn by disease. X says they were so impaired that senility must soon have resulted, so that it seemed to her (?) better to let that body go to pieces as soon as a good opportunity should occur. . . . And we believe that H. P. B. will be for some time occupied in training a new instrument, and one not so young as to be useless at the present cyclic crisis. He does not pretend to speak with authority, but certain sayings of hers — and perhaps what I might call post-mortem facts — bear him out. Certainly she left everything in order. All things were planned out, and evidence was abundantly had to the effect that she knew her departure was near. Moreover, X said that looking upon her as an Adept, whose chief work was done outside of the objective body, it was reasonable to suppose that she is now enabled to use, upon higher (or inner) planes of being, the power previously expended in the maintenance of that body. . . . You see, he believes her attentions to be largely engaged with the new instrument. But, from his point of view, her co-adjutors and associates [i.e. the Masters and Their chelas or disciples] would naturally lend a helping hand in her absence, especially if the T.S., as a body, called down their help.”” (p. 155-156)

In 1893, Judge met Katherine Tingley. Most sources, based on deductions drawn from Tingley’s own assertions, indicate late 1894 as when they first met but Emil Neresheimer stated that Judge first introduced him to Tingley and her husband in the autumn of 1893. This seems to us the more likely date, especially as Neresheimer provides further details relating to 1893, which are unlikely to have been completely misremembered. Tingley was not then a member of the Theosophical Society and did not request to join it until October 1894. 

Katherine Tingley was then moderately well known in New York Spiritualist circles as a trance medium. A powerful and rather domineering personality, she already had a rather troubling personal reputation and ethically dubious background. It thus may seem highly surprising and puzzling that William Judge – who always warned against or at least clearly criticised Spiritualism, mediumship, psychism, etc. and constantly emphasised the necessity for good ethics and moral purity in Occultism – could have such a positive view of Tingley, whereby she quite quickly became his esoteric confidante and someone who he was seemingly regularly putting to the test and attempting to train, with regard to receiving communications from HPB and the Masters, and having HPB speak through her while she (Tingley) was in a state of trance and unconscious of what was taking place. On such occasions, Judge transcribed the messages that came through.

While one’s personal character and conduct in life certainly do matter, it is surely the case that the Masters and Initiates see the very heart of things and the very souls of people. A troubling and troubled personality may at times unwittingly conceal a soul or Ego or spiritual Individuality which has been of great use to the Masters’ Lodge and reached special heights of inner attainment in former lives, even though they may now lie in the very distant past. Still, one who has previously devoted their whole being to the Masters and Their unceasing labours of Compassion for the welfare of humanity is known to Them. And anyone who is sincerely willing to serve Them has to be given – or re-given – the chance, even if the Masters see there is a strong likelihood that they may fail.

This may perhaps also explain why C. W. Leadbeater – who possessed a much worse character and nature than Katherine Tingley – was also given a chance by the Masters, when the Master K.H. or Mahatma Koot Hoomi responded in the mid-1880s to Leadbeater’s apparently earnest request to become his chela with two brief letters, delivered through the agency of HPB herself, in which the Master confirmed that Leadbeater was now beginning probationary chelaship and would have to prepare for the tests and trials inescapably faced by anyone who embarks on that most arduous yet most important of Paths. He received no further Mahatma Letters after that and history shows how quickly his true character showed itself. But our point is that we know now, thanks to the research by Gregory Tillett, that even before joining the Theosophical Society and when still a village priest in the Church of England, Leadbeater had behaved inappropriately with young boys. For the Masters to still give him such a chance, he must have been much better in some previous incarnations than in this one.

As for Tingley’s being a medium by both disposition and profession, HPB in her first book refers to two forms of mediumship, physical and spiritual: 

“Physical mediumship depends on a peculiar organization of the physical system; spiritual mediumship, which is accompanied by a display of subjective, intellectual phenomena, depends upon a like peculiar organization of the spiritual nature of the medium. . . . the sentiments [of mediumistically received messages] may be of the very noblest character. The latter depend entirely on the moral state of the medium. It does not require that he should be educated, to write philosophical treatises worthy of Aristotle, nor a poet, to write verses that would reflect honor upon a Byron or a Lamartine; but it does require that the soul of the medium shall be pure enough to serve as a channel for spirits who are capable of giving utterance to such lofty sentiments.” (“Isis Unveiled” Vol. 1, p. 367)

While it is true that Theosophy is in general opposed to mediumship (which nowadays includes its more modern name of “channelling”) it recognises that there can be such thing as pure mediumship or spiritual mediumship – which HPB calls “the only harmless kind, and is often an elevating gift” – but it also recognises that this is very rarely encountered; the vast majority of all mediumship and channelling is impure because rather than being truly spiritual it is instead psychic, i.e. of an astral nature and character, and the mediums or channellers are usually entirely oblivious as to the distinction between psychic and spiritual.

It should be made clear that no-one living today knows very much at all of Judge’s connection with Tingley. He kept it almost entirely secret, to the extent that only perhaps ten of his most trusted colleagues knew of her and they were asked not to mention her to anyone else. A few of these – such as Julia Keightley, Claude Falls Wright, and Alice Leighton Cleather – were sent by Judge to have private meetings with Tingley, in which they would receive apparent messages from HPB and the Masters through her, and were then asked to report back to Judge to share their impressions and experience.

We do know that he never wrote anywhere that Tingley was the chosen “instrument” for the HPB Nirmanakaya to assimilate with. We also know that he never wrote that Tingley was to be his “Occult Successor” following his death. But there is strong evidence to back up the first notion. This is seen not only in the apparent HPB messages through the entranced Tingley, which Judge transcribed, – and his sending of excerpts of these to his closest inner circle in the Esoteric Section or School, in which he attributed them to the departed HPB, albeit without naming Tingley – but also in the communications from the Master M. which WQJ received inwardly and wrote down in what would later become known as his “Occult Diary.” 

Later, Alice Leighton Cleather and a few others would claim that WQJ had lost touch with the Masters after HPB passed away and that his connection with Tingley was simply a desperate attempt to receive messages from Them and HPB through any means possible, so that he could feel that They hadn’t abandoned him after all. The “Occult Diary,” and the attestations from those who were far closer to him than Cleather was and who can thus be considered to know far better what they were talking about, show that this is an entirely erroneous and preposterous claim. Judge had no need of Tingley for himself but it would seem that his Teachers had need of Tingley – at least at that time – for the sake of the future of the Movement.

The “Occult Diary” spans a period of two and a half months, from the start of October to middle of December 1894. It must be only a tiny fragment of all that William Judge recorded of his occult life but it was virtually the only fragment to be found after his death in March 1896. We quote here a few entries, in order to give some idea of its contents and style. We have replaced symbols with the names for which they stand, to make it clearer:

“Oct. 1 – [Master M.] directs me to issue circular and order (No. 1) [i.e. the document titled “BY MASTER’S DIRECTION”] taking over entire control of ES [i.e. the Esoteric Section or Esoteric School within the Theosophical Society, which had been jointly led by WQJ and Annie Besant after HPB’s death in 1891] removing AB [i.e. Annie Besant] from headship. Began writing the same.”

“Nov. 2 – [Master M. said] In 15 years [i.e. in 1909] there will be great changes here & the TS [i.e. Theosophical Society] doctrines will subtly affect the people. After another US pres[iden]t has been assassinated [Note: This proved an accurate prophecy, in that President William McKinley was assassinated in 1901].”

“AB [i.e. Annie Besant] shown by [Master M.] before me nude. Stomach & right side black, eyes blindfold, heart round and white, 2 lights over head black and white fighting. Suspended in mid air. The feeling of one day one way & another another due to this black and white fighting [i.e. meaning here the forces of light and of darkness or the White Lodge and Black Lodge] it causes depression & slow circulation. You recognize her work, are pained for her state & the damage to TS [i.e. Theosophical Society]. If love in TS ask for her. She should meditate not by the rules given her by dark man [i.e. G. N. Chakravarti, who Besant had unwisely taken as her occult guide in 1893, whereupon she began to turn against both HPB and WQJ, and launched alongside Col. Olcott the protracted persecution that became known as “the Judge Case,” accusing him of creating and sending fraudulent Mahatma Letters since HPB’s passing, in order to further his own purposes or ambitions; “dark man” refers to his nature and influence rather than to skin colour, for the Master M. himself is also Indian and dark skinned]. Before 3 years [i.e. by the end of 1897] you & she will touch hands again as when H.P.B. was alive. Then the real work of her life will begin. That is if she lets the Higher rule. But if she follows ambition, the rules given by the dark man & her fancied sense of injustice rule, she will not have this opportunity.”

“Nov. 26 – [Master M. said] Leave for London early in May. If you go later all will be lost and confused. Do not let them know you are going so early. Make any sacrifice to go thus early. Work among the people there & get your true position before convention meets. Only tell your center of your coming. No one else.”

“Look out for anonymous and bogus Lodge letters [i.e. Mahatma Letters, letters claiming to be sent by the Lodge of Masters] to FTS [i.e. Fellows of the Theosophical Society]. Both will be sent. [Note: This proved to be an accurate prophecy a week later, as detailed in a subsequent entry, and was also repeated by the Master close to the time.]“

“[Katherine Tingley] best work through you. Power increased. In Feb. [1895] [Katherine Tingley] will pull you through a shadow of ill health. [Note: This proved to be an accurate prophecy, as due to worsening health in early 1895, Tingley took WQJ to Mineral Wells, Texas, for rest and recuperation.] . . . [Katherine Tingley] is closer to Sun both up

Blessed on top[,] enemies in the mire of their karma. 1895 Spring signs of domestic breakings for Blessed will walk off from it all not later than 1896. [Note: This relates to Katherine Tingley’s domestic situation and marriage; other sources confirm that “Blessed” was a name used for Tingley. It is also implied by her being mentioned by her familiar symbol in the immediately following sentence.] Then begins newer life & freedom   [Katherine Tingley] will not cause this. It is a natural result of conditions already on.”

It may be asked how one can know that the aforementioned symbol – a left-angled diagonal line with three smaller horizontal lines through it – is a reference to Katherine Tingley. One big indication is that Judge sometimes addressed Tingley by this sign in his letters to her, also at times addressing her as “Purple.” Another is the attestation, after his death, by members of Judge’s inner circle, that they had known him to use this symbol when referring to Tingley in personal correspondence with them. The historical context and background also supports it. Curiously, almost exactly the same symbol, but with a straighter and shorter diagonal line, was used by Judge as his own signature at the end of his little known but occultly significant message written “by astral hand” when on the verge of death (from which he recovered) in 1894. This can be seen here.

William Judge’s only known records of messages apparently from the disembodied “HPB” – and which are generally understood to have been spoken through Katherine Tingley – date from shortly after the entries in the “Occult Diary,” namely from January 1895. Excerpts from that of 3rd January 1895 include:

“Yours is not a bootless [Note: Judge adds “fruitless” in brackets, when sending extracts from this on 4th January to Archibald Keightley to pass on confidentially to others of Judge’s closest supporters in England; WQJ refers to it as “what HPB said to me Jany 3, prematurely ended by a visitor – as usual & as results from European continual nagging at me. . . . You can let all worthy & devoted loyalists read this – It may be read in a proper group.  Copies not to be made. This is to be kept with Council papers.”] errand. You have nobly sustained our cause in the crisis. Be encouraged. Well did Master know the staunch fearless attributes of your soul when he directed me to make you the leader of our craft [Note: Notice the usage of Masonic terminology here.] in America. . . . Mistakes have been made but you have not gone far from the lines laid down by Master. My desire is for you to be careful about sending out Instructions to the E.S. [i.e. Esoteric School or Section], for treacherous and unworthy persons are within the gates, and all new ideas will be appropriated by the other side after the split [i.e. the organisational split or separation between the devotedly pro-HPB Judge supporters and the rest of the Theosophical Society, led by the increasingly anti-HPB Besant, Olcott, and others, with Chakravarti as their inspiring genius, was already envisaged and accepted several months before it actually took place]. Our dear chela, you have at last found your fellow chela, who was one of ours years ago, consecrated to the work then, and now by the Master’s will brought face to face with you. . . . [Symbol representing Katherine Tingley] is Raavais, linked with you in our work. As your light shines into [Tingley’s] soul, fears will disappear as the dew before the sun. . . . [Tingley] should have been in place with us at the beginning [i.e. the founding of the Theosophical Society in 1875, in that same city of New York where WQJ and Tingley lived], but for your folly and his [i.e. Tingley is referred to by masculine pronouns in these messages] lack of trust in the Master. . . . I am, next to the American work, interested in Spain. Ireland can take care of itself. . . . Send [Tingley] out, but not yet; you can make what you will of [Tingley], for the truthfulness of spirit and devotion to us that are there will make it a good instrument. But keep it well in the background. In outer work [Tingley] is our mystery. . . . I will not permit you to resign nor will I permit you to submit to further investigation [i.e. in the so-called “Judge Case” which we referred to earlier]. Form your plans for American work, keep all your lines perfect with sustaining points and leave the rest to us. . . . I can do better in time here. I will not touch upon minor points; they will take care of themselves. Master is not after minor points. Let our eyes turn to the American future of Theosophy.”

Two days later, on 5th January, Judge writes a letter to Tingley, saying in part:

“Dear Purple, Now about this Spanish idea [i.e. a reference to what the departed HPB said about Spain in the communication from which the above is excerpted; we have not included the details about Spain]. It’s a good one – but. It will raise some jealousy. She [i.e. HPB] was right in saying, as she did today, that she did not mean to exclude the rest of Europe and that those now in the work in Spain had not used all efforts. . . . Now the prominent man there has not accepted the order [i.e. the Esoteric Section circular of November 1894, headed “BY MASTER’S DIRECTION,” in which Judge detailed the hold of Chakravarti and orthodox Hindu Brahmins over Besant and deposed her from her shared headship in the Section/School]. Would it be well to tell him what she has said? It looks to me like a good idea. He does believe in HPB . . . If you think well of this plan I will write to him from Chicago. . . . I shall have you in mind every day. Why don’t you put down briefly things you get [i.e. in terms of occult communications] & not have them all lost.”

We have put in bold some of the wording which quite clearly suggests that by this point, Judge already had a lot of confidence in Tingley. While he may still have been testing and training her in various ways, the words in bold suggest that it was not a simple teacher-pupil relationship but that Judge was actively consulting her on some of the most important inner workings of the Esoteric Section and affirming to her his trust or reliance on her opinion.

Just over a year later, in 1896, following Judge’s death, Julia Keightley wrote to members of the Esoteric Section that “It is well known to members of the Inner Council in America and Europe that the present Outer Head [i.e. of the Esoteric Section, namely Katherine Tingley, who was installed in that position after WQJ’s passing] has for two years past assisted Mr. Judge in the inner work of the School as his associate and equal. Some of these Councillors were doing important work under her directions, and by the order of Mr. Judge, for some time before he passed away. . . . For myself, I may say that as early as June, 1894, Mr. Judge told me of the standing of the present Outer Head in the school, and spoke of her work at that time and for the future.  I am one among several to whom he so spoke himself.”

We are personally not convinced that her assistance of Judge continued unbroken during all that time from 1894-1896, but we will touch on that later. For now, here are excerpts from a message to WQJ from HPB on 9th (though perhaps more likely the 5th, if one compares the entire message with Judge’s letter of that date to Tingley) January 1895:

“Yes, a pledge had better be made. (This with [Tingley]. – W.Q.J.) There will be more to it than you now understand. No one I have met in the last five centuries has been qualified. As I said, [Tingley] is our mystery. [Tingley] is a mystery to [Tingley]. Judge, try a little more of it. Let [Tingley] say what ______ wants to. . . . I found after the last breath had left that old carcass I had used, I went to where are those crystallized forces that are only understood by _____. Then I took a deep rest – you know why – to prepare me for the work that has come. I then gravitated to Spain, and I found in that Lodge a Companion of mine . . . Through him I found that Spain as a people has that quality of devotion that is essential for the promulgation of our truth. . . . Then I knew that although there was not in the outer any evidence of our connection there, the seed of my thoughts and yours had entered Spain and some fallen into good ground. So here I said I will centre for a while and all that time the [Theosophical] body which I was a part in America missed me. Use all means possible to introduce our literature there. When we meet again I will give you the Instructions I spoke of that will carry your E.S. through a course that will be useful.”

The above relates in part to the “New Era of Western Occultism” repeatedly spoken of by William Judge from 1892 onwards and which is explored and explained in our article William Q. Judge and The New Western Occultism.

The last known record of this type of communication is apparently dated 3rd April 1895. It says: “B. [i.e. Blavatsky, or rather that Being who had previously been known as H. P. Blavatsky] How I yearn for the day when I can come myself and work. It is being put off by all this strife and bitterness [i.e. as directed against WQJ and his supporters and work, by Besant, Olcott, etc. and their supporters]. I will come, as I said, through [Katherine Tingley]. Everyday they keep this up is another day of delay for that event.”

It was at the very end of that month, at the annual Convention of the American Section of the Theosophical Society, held in Boston from 28th-29th April 1895, that William Q. Judge and his supporters (who constituted very nearly all of the thousands of American Theosophists) declared complete independence and autonomy from the Theosophical Society headquartered at Adyar, India and led by Olcott and Besant. The newly independent organisation named itself “The Theosophical Society in America” and Judge was elected its President for life, just as HPB had said almost a decade previously that he should be. Judge’s supporters (who were usually the most loyal students and defenders of HPB and her teachings) in other parts of the world followed suit, forming international Sections of the Judge-led “Theosophical Society in America.” This was the first split or schism within the modern Theosophical Movement but it appeared to be a necessary one.

Alice Cleather would later write (in the 1920s) that Judge introduced Katherine Tingley to her “at the Boston Convention of 1895, a year before his death, as a very special and mysterious person.” That may well be what actually happened. However, it should be read and considered alongside the following, from Ernest Hargrove, a USA-based English Theosophist who was far closer to Judge than Cleather had been and who knew him better as a person:

“For the benefit of those who think they know all about Mrs. Tingley, . . . and Judge as being “under her thumb”; . . . it is worth noting that she [i.e. Tingley] attended the Boston Convention; made a short speech; that Judge glared at her with deep displeasure while she spoke and after she resumed her seat; and that at the end of the session he called her to him and rebuked her so severely that she wept.” (“Theosophical Quarterly” July 1932)

The evidence we have shared is indeed indicative that Judge considered her “a very special and mysterious person.” But in light of Hargrove’s account, it seems to us very unlikely that Judge viewed her as his “equal” in esoteric and Theosophical matters, even if some of his privately recorded statements and letters may occasionally tend towards giving that impression. 

To this, we should add the fact that according to Emil Neresheimer and other Judge associates of that era, Judge had little to no contact or involvement with Tingley following that Convention in April 1895. There is no record or mention anywhere of him meeting with her, writing to her, speaking about her, or praising her to others, from after that date, i.e. for the remainder of his life, which came to an end on 21st March 1896. Some remarked on her complete absence and lack of visits or messages of support during Judge’s final weeks, in which it was very apparent that he was dying and had almost zero chance of recovery.

We may never know what actually happened but it seems apparent that something had happened and that WQJ had largely, if not entirely, severed his connection with Tingley. This suggests that she had done something or adopted some course of thought and action which amounted to an “occult failure,” disqualifying herself from the important role towards which she had been working. We do not state this for definite, since we do not know, but the signs seem to point in that direction, as does the sad history of her actions and conduct after being appointed Outer Head of the Esoteric School and Leader of the Theosophical Society in America following Judge’s demise.

We do know that by October 1895, Judge was already spending time and energy testing and examining the reliability of another mediumistic woman, a Mrs McKinstry, about whom nothing at all is known today. There would have been little to no reason or motive to do that, had his connection with Katherine Tingley continued unabated, which is maybe further evidence that it had not. He fairly soon arrived at a negative assessment of McKinstry’s capabilities, however, as confirmed in a letter to Ernest Hargrove on 26th October 1895.

Throughout the latter half of 1895, Judge had been away from New York, staying in a succession of warmer parts of the USA in a bid to improve his failing health. Accepting that this wasn’t working, he and his wife Ella moved back to New York at the start of February 1896.

His closest Theosophical friends in New York – if not the whole of the country – were the Griscoms: Clement Acton Griscom, Jr. and his wife Genevieve Ludlow Griscom. It was Clement Griscom who wrote the following tribute for “The Path” (renamed “Theosophy”) magazine after Judge’s passing. An abbreviated version was included in Theosophy Company’s third volume of “Letters That Have Helped Me.” Writing under one of his pseudonyms (G. Hijo), Griscom relates:

“In the summer of 1894 we were privileged to have him stay at our house for several weeks, and since then he spent at least one evening a week with us until his illness forced him to leave New York. . . . Day after day he would come back from the office utterly exhausted in mind and body, and night after night he would lie awake fighting the arrows of suspicion and doubt that would come at him from all over the world. He said they were like shafts of fire piercing him; and in the morning he would come downstairs wan and pale and unrested, and one step nearer the limit of his strength; but still with the same gentle and forgiving spirit. Truly they knew not what they did.

“Mr. Judge’s nearest friends care as little for phenomena and phenomenal happenings as he did, but for purposes of record an account of a few incidents may not be amiss. He would cautiously, but still quite frequently give evidence to the observant that he was, when he desired, quite aware of your thoughts, and of what happened at places where he was not.

“Perhaps the neatest little thing of the kind was once when my wife had been discussing with a friend the date of the invention of writing. Two or three hours later Mr. Judge came in, greeted them, took up a piece of paper and wrote on it: “Was writing known before Panini?” and handed it to my wife before he had said a word or been spoken to beyond greetings. This well known article in Five Years of Theosophy was found to cover just the obscure points of the discussion. 

“While staying with us in the country in 1894 he would take me out for a 15 or 20 minutes’ walk just before bedtime and when in a talkative mood would describe to me the things he then saw interiorly; elementals of all kinds, pictures in the astral light, some trivial, some most interesting and in the nature of prophetic visions. I recollect a series of visions he described to me which represented the condition and future of a certain person prominent among those attacking him, and although this happened in August, 1894, long before the Convention in Boston, everything described has come true. He told me that the Master [i.e. the Master M., who, as already explained, was the Guru of Judge, as also of H. P. Blavatsky] quite frequently informed him of important matters by means of allegorical pictures, as one picture would contain as much information as pages of a letter or message, and he described how he could tell these pictures from those of an ordinary astral character.

“It seems so strange to me, who have known Mr. Judge for years, to think that any Theosophist could honestly doubt that he was in constant communication with the Masters, or that he himself was not an advanced occultist, for his whole life proved both these things. Perhaps the most striking evidence of his greatness was the wisdom with which he treated different people and the infinite knowledge of character shown by him in his guidance of his pupils. I do not believe he was the same to any two people. Looking back now over many years of intercourse, tracing my own growth and change, and the part Mr. Judge played in it, I am convinced that not only did he thoroughly understand me, both inside and out, but that during all those years he was working with a definite purpose in view, trying to guide me along a certain path in a definite direction, to attain a definite result. I believe it was the same with all his pupils. We play different parts in the world and the movement, and he knew it and allowed for it, and directed accordingly. His most lovable trait was his exquisite sympathy and gentleness. It has been said of him that no one ever touched a sore spot with such infinite tenderness, and I know many that would rather have been scolded and corrected by Mr. Judge than praised by anyone else.

“It was the good fortune of a few of us to know something of the real Ego who used the body known as Wm. Q. Judge. He once spent some hours describing to my wife and me the experience the Ego had in assuming control of the instrument it was to use for so many years. [Note: For more on this, see Who Was William Quan Judge?] The process was not a quick nor an easy one and, indeed, was never absolutely perfected, for to Mr. Judge’s dying day, the physical tendencies and heredity of the body he used would crop up and interfere with the full expression of the inner man’s thoughts and feelings. An occasional abruptness and coldness of manner was attributable to this lack of co-ordination. Of course Mr. Judge was perfectly aware of this and it would trouble him for fear his friends would be deceived as to his real feelings. He was always in absolute control of his thoughts and actions, but his body would sometimes slightly modify their expression. . . .

“Mr. Judge told me in December, 1894, that the Judge body was due by its Karma to die in the next year and that it would have to be tided over this period by extraordinary means. He then expected this process to be entirely successful, and that he would be able to use that body for many years, but he did not count upon the assaults from without, nor the strain and exhaustion due to the “Row.” This, and the body’s heredity, proved too much for even his will and power. Two months before his death he knew he was to die, but even then the indomitable will was hard to conquer and the poor exhausted, pain-racked body was dragged through a miserable two months in one final and supreme effort to stay with his friends. And when he did decide to go, those who loved him most were the most willing for the parting. I thank the Gods that I was privileged to know him. It was a benediction to call him friend.”

Writing under her initials of G. L. G., Genevieve Griscom wrote at the same time:

“What he was to one of his pupils, I believe he was to all – so wide-reaching was his sympathy, so deep his understanding of each heart – and I but voice the feeling of hundreds all over the world when I say that we mourn the tenderest of friends, the wisest of counsellors, the bravest and noblest of leaders. What a man was this, to have been such to people of so widely varying nationalities, opinions and beliefs – to have drawn them all to him by the power of his love – and, in so doing, to have brought them closer to each other. There was no difficulty he would not take infinite pains to unravel, no sore spot in the heart he did not sense and strive to heal.”

On 16th January 1896, shortly before arriving back in New York, Judge instructed by letter the young Ernest Hargrove – who all the available facts show to have been his protégé and his hope for the future exoteric leadership of the Society, and who was due to move in with Mr. and Mrs. Judge upon their return to New York, at Judge’s request – to remove various sacred and secret items from a private room used only by Judge, at the very top of the then-headquarters of the Theosophical Society in New York: 

“There is a small room on the top story of 144 [Madison Avenue] which has a Yale lock. In it are the following: . . . [details omitted by Hargrove when publishing this letter in “Theosophical Quarterly” in the early 1930s] Now then: I want to give up the room to the Trustees. Take large sheets of wrapping paper and twine (Look out for ____’s curiosity). Do up the old robe and ask Griscoms (Mrs.) to take charge of it for me. Nobody knows what’s in the room, no matter what they may suspect; so don’t tell them.”

Shortly afterwards, on 29th, he would write regarding one of the mysterious items retrieved from that room:

“The yellow stone in the little filagree box is not to be handled. Tell the Gs [Griscoms] if they have it.”

For more on the “yellow stone,” see the article About The Mahatma Letters.

Hargrove reports that during the weeks after Judge’s return to New York, “No matter how ill, he always got up and dressed as usual, refusing to stay in bed; but, with rare exceptions, he could not receive visitors. He sent for Mrs. Griscom, wanting to see her, and he saw Mr. Griscom, so loyally devoted to him, several times.”

From these brief extracts, we can gain some inkling of the importance of and the great occult trust accorded by WQJ to the Griscoms, especially Genevieve Ludlow Griscom, as she was the one who he specified should “take charge of . . . the old robe,” whatever that may be, and he also arranged to meet and speak with her privately in the weeks leading up to his death. From what we know of him, this would not have been for the purpose of mere inane social chitchat but for something deeper and more significant.

The most crucial importance of the Griscoms, and especially the vital role that Genevieve would be destined to play for the Movement – albeit completely unsuspected and unheard of by the vast majority of Theosophists worldwide – would emerge just two years later and will be discussed shortly.

In the January 1934 issue of “Theosophical Quarterly,” Ernest Hargrove writes:

“On the morning of March 19th [1896], I had gone to the T.S. Headquarters at 144 Madison Avenue as usual, although much worried by Judge’s appearance (as already stated, I occupied one of the rooms in his apartment). In the early afternoon I received a telegram: “Go to Twenty-Ninth Street railroad office; get full particulars all Florida resorts, trains, tickets, sleepers; then come home. – W. Q. Judge.” When I returned, he whispered that if he could “only get to some place where he could sit in the midst of sunshine and flowers”, he might yet perhaps recover. Not long afterwards, while I was sitting by the sofa on which he half sat and half reclined, watching him as he dozed, the “Rajah” [i.e. the real, inner “WQJ,” said to be an Indian Initiate who had assumed occupancy of the Irish body in the latter’s childhood] suddenly came to the fore, and with his unmistakable force said, among other things: “There should be calmness. Hold fast. Go slow.”

“On Friday, the 20th, . . . In the afternoon he got some broken sleep. It was after this that he told me he was “away most of the time” – had I seen him “come back just then?” That night, Miss Emily Judge was obliged to go home, and as Mrs. Judge badly needed rest, it became my privilege to sit with him from about ten until about three o’clock on Saturday morning. During that time he dozed, though rousing himself every half hour regularly for his medicine. He was fighting to the last ditch: it was his duty. Unselfish to the end, he told me every time I gave him his medicine, to go to bed at once; what was I up so late for? – with that rare smile of his. Numerous excuses were invented, at which he again smiled his old smile. At about three, Mrs. Judge took my place, but at six she called me, saying that Judge wished to see me at once. When I went to him he whispered asking me to go immediately to fetch a doctor, a specialist, who had been called in previously to consult with his regular physician. I realized now, if I had not done so previously, that we were at the last ditch; so I tore through the streets to the home of this famous specialist, and, when no one answered the doorbell, rang it furiously for half an hour without ceasing, until at last he appeared, – only to refuse to see Judge on the ground that to do so in the absence of his regular physician would be contrary to professional etiquette. I pleaded, breathlessly; but the fact that a man’s life was at stake did not affect him.

“Hurrying back to the apartment, I found Judge in the same condition, sitting bolt upright on the sofa . . . now he refused to see any doctor. At about 8:30 I left his room to ask the nurse if she thought anything could be done, but at about ten minutes to nine Mrs. Judge rushed in, calling us to come at once. I found him still sitting upright, but with the clear mark of approaching death on his face. In three minutes he quietly breathed his last.

“Thus seemed to die “the greatest of the Exiles” [i.e. a name by which HPB apparently once spoke of him to Annie Besant], – a warrior of the Lodge. As I wrote at the time: “He passed from comparative inactivity into the full use of his powers; from constant physical pain into a state where that pain was only a memory. For him, death had no terrors, brought with it no separation. So we who loved him have no cause to mourn, but instead should rejoice that he is set free at last.”

“The truth is that Judge, “dead,” went out of his way to make it evident to some of us that he was very much alive. We could not have doubted it, but his generosity of love demanded expression, and found it.

“The debt we owe him is beyond calculation. . . . H.P.B. had hewn a track through primeval forest, and, to do so, had been obliged to use dynamite and axe. Judge turned her track into a paved road: he was the great consolidator. . . . Gratitude is never easy to express, but the least I can say is that I personally owe him, directly or indirectly, all that I value in life.”

Seemingly unlike Judge and several others, Emil Neresheimer had maintained regular contact and connection with Katherine Tingley, all the way through 1895 and into 1896. Somehow, Tingley had become aware of Judge’s death before the vast majority of his colleagues and it was she who alerted Neresheimer to the fact and called him to her home urgently. She informed him that the now disembodied WQJ or “Rajah” had visited her and wished to speak through her to his co-workers, as he was reportedly distressed that his life had ended before he had opportunity to clearly state his wishes for the future of the Theosophical work. 

Tingley was apparently unaware of the “Occult Diary” but was very interested to see it after Neresheimer, Hargrove, and Clement Griscom discovered it among Judge’s possessions a few days later. As mentioned earlier, neither in that Diary nor anywhere else does Judge write – or record as being from the Masters or HPB – any statement naming Katherine Tingley, or anyone else, as a “Successor” to him. The expression “your successor” is, however, used once by the Master M. in those notes but the said successor is not named or indicated. Yet in light of everything we shared earlier, it does not seem unreasonable to conclude that Tingley was initially intended to serve as a type of Successor. The disembodied “HPB” virtually says as much – just not in those exact words – in messages which we know WQJ accepted as genuine. Reading all of those, it is hardly surprising that those Theosophists concluded that Tingley was supposed to be the new Leader of the Society, especially after Neresheimer told them of her deep concern following Judge’s death and her claim to continued inner contact with him.

Please note that we said “was initially intended to serve as a type of Successor,” etc. It does seem apparent that it was initially hoped that she would fit herself adequately for such a role and become suitable for real occult “assimilation” with HPB. But Neresheimer, Griscom, Hargrove, and others seem not to have been aware of Judge’s apparent distancing and seeming estrangement from Tingley during the last 10 months or so of his life. Had HPB’s fear, expressed in 1887, come true? – “. . . even in Occultism there are such things as a failure, & a retardment, and a misfit.”

Whatever the case may be – and we do not claim to know the answer as to the exact state of things at that time – it transpired that Tingley had meetings in her home over the next few days, with leading members of Judge’s inner circle. There, she informed them with bold self-assurance that she was the new Outer Head of the Esoteric School and that all important decisions affecting the whole Society would be made by her from now on. This was immediately and unquestioningly accepted by those who had gathered around her, who proceeded to request that she also assume the role of President of “The Theosophical Society in America.” She declined this but made clear that any President would ultimately follow her wishes. 

In the ensuing weeks and months, Ernest Hargrove was elected as President of the Society and Tingley – until then a completely unknown name and figure to 99.9% of the Society’s members – was revealed as the new Outer Head, with excerpts from WQJ’s “Occult Diary” and the HPB messages being shared with the membership, to support these new developments. The vast majority of the Society’s membership across the USA and around the world accepted it, for they had no reason to question its legitimacy, besides which it filled them with hope and optimism for the future. 

As the term “Outer Head” may be unfamiliar to some readers, we may explain that the Esoteric Section or Esoteric School of Theosophy – begun by HPB in 1888-1889, assisted by WQJ – was the largely hidden (though its existence was not a secret and any member could apply for entrance) “inner body” of the Theosophical Society, and intended be the “heart and soul” of that exoteric or outer or public Society. It was not supposed to be a type of “club” or “clique” but rather an extremely serious and actual outpost of the Trans-Himalayan Esoteric School, i.e. of that Brotherhood of Masters most closely involved with HPB and the establishment of the Society. If members would commit to serving wholeheartedly the great Theosophical Cause by vowing to defend, protect, and promote it, and if they were serious about wishing to embark on the Path towards chelaship/discipleship, as well as being willing to abide by the numerous rules of conduct, they would be permitted to receive teachings given by HPB which were not publicly accessible and were of a more esoteric and occultly oriented kind than found in her public writings, which are ultimately only semi-esoteric. HPB was the first Outer Head of the School. The title is derived from the fact that there was an Inner Head, for whom the Outer Head was the mouthpiece and accessible representative or agent. Contact with the Inner Head could only be reached by a member through successful attainment of chelaship, or at least by coming close to such attainment. The Inner Head of the Theosophical Society’s Esoteric School was the Master Morya, the Teacher of H. P. Blavatsky. And so, in declaring herself the new Outer Head after the passing of William Q. Judge, Katherine Tingley was implying that she too possessed such a high occult connection with the Masters of Wisdom and not “only” with the disembodied HPB and WQJ.

It is of course possible that WQJ and others were now attempting to work through Tingley as perhaps the best or only “instrument” available for this purpose at that particular time. Who can say?!? Truth often is stranger than fiction.

But if it be true that “by their fruits you shall know them,” the fruitage of her work rapidly began to indicate someone wholly unsuitable for any type of Theosophical leadership position, let alone the most esoterically important and sacred role for the whole Society: one which, if abused, could only work great disaster.

Tingley’s love of power and domination showed itself early on, as did her love of personal praise and flattery, her talent for manipulating others, and her ruthlessness in dealing with those who challenged or opposed her. In many respects, she showed the characteristics of a typical “cult leader.” This would only worsen and intensify as time went on, eventually reaching the most absurd heights – or lows – in the Theosophical commune she founded at Point Loma, where she was flanked by armed bodyguards, required all members to wear an identical plain uniform rather than their own clothing, and had those who moved to Point Loma surrender all their money and material goods, which they were never to receive back. Besides all of this, many observed that her actual knowledge and understanding of Theosophy and Theosophical teachings was extremely poor and that she was constantly making elementary mistakes whenever she attempted to speak on such matters. Eventually, she mostly gave up attempting to do so and left that side of things to those who had actually bothered to study HPB’s and WQJ’s writings, such as her own eventual “Successor,” G. de Purucker.

Something which is made very clear throughout the original Theosophical literature is that the closing of the first 5,000 year cycle of the Kali Yuga (the Dark Age or Black Age), and the dawn of the New Cycle, would be an extremely serious, important, and momentous event in the evolution of humanity, and this was due to take place in just a matter of years.

In “Letters That Have Helped Me” (p. 97) William Judge writes, “The present cycle, which closes Nov. 17th, 1897 – Feb. 18th, 1898, is one of the most important of any that have been.”

Only a few years after that, sometime around 1900, the zodiacal or astrological Age of Pisces was also due to draw to a close, whereupon the Aquarian Age or New Age of Aquarius would be ushered in. It was just before this period of greatest cyclic importance that the Masters had sent HPB to teach the world and sow the seeds that could transform human consciousness. It transpired that both HPB and the one she called “my only friend,” WQJ, were no longer bodily on the scene by 1897. But she had warned the American Theosophists just a few weeks before she passed away in 1891:

“The period which we have now reached in the cycle that will close between 1897-98 is, and will continue to be, one of great conflict and continued strain. If the T. S. can hold through it, good; if not, while Theosophy will remain unscathed, the Society will perish — perchance most ingloriously — and the World will suffer. I fervently hope that I may not see such a disaster in my present body. The critical nature of the stage on which we have entered is as well known to the forces that fight against us as to those that fight on our side. No opportunity will be lost of sowing dissension, of taking advantage of mistaken and false moves, of instilling doubt, of augmenting difficulties, of breathing suspicions, so that by any and every means the unity of the Society may be broken and the ranks of our Fellows thinned and thrown into disarray. . . . Self-watchfulness is never more necessary than when a personal wish to lead, and wounded vanity, dress themselves in the peacock’s feathers of devotion and altruistic work; but at the present crisis of the Society a lack of self-control and watchfulness may become fatal in every case.” (“Five Messages to The American Theosophists” p. 27-29)

In September 1897, Ernest Hargrove resigned his presidency of the Society, as he felt he could no longer support or endorse Tingley in any way, or take orders from her. Numerous other members, who had been personally close to either Judge or Blavatsky, or both, were feeling the same and began to rally together.

It was known that Tingley was planning a Theosophical Convention in Chicago for 18th February 1898, the highly significant date that had been given for the ending of one major cycle and the dawn of the next. On 30th January of 1898, Hargrove wrote to Tingley:

“Now, my dear friend, you have made an awful mess of it – that is the simple truth. You were run in as O[uter] H[ead] as the only person in sight who was ready to hand at the time. We were all of us heartily glad to welcome you, for you solved the problem which confronted us – who was to be O.H.; you were a sort of neutral centre around which we could congregate. And most of us fairly yelled with delight, for you solved our difficulty and we had ample proofs that some members of the Lodge were working through you and that you had high and rare mediumistic and psychic gifts and that you were a disciple of the Lodge. So things went swimmingly for a time.

“Our enthusiasm and anxiety to see all go well carried us too far – carried me too far to the extent of . . . leading me to use my personal influence with people to get them to accept you as O.H. I thought it was for the good of the work, but since then I have learned better.” 

In other words, Hargrove felt somewhat justified in having spearheaded Tingley’s rise to power, but at the same time felt it had ultimately been a mistake to do so, or at least to have gone to the extents that he did.

6,000 members of “The Theosophical Society in America” and its international Sections in other parts of the world, including the UK, attended the 18th February 1898 Convention in Chicago. 

It was at that event that total and supreme autocratic power was conferred upon Katherine Tingley. But something worse than that was to happen: now possessed of this unbridled and unquestionable authority, Tingley announced that she was dissolving the Theosophical Society with immediate effect! She declared the birth of her new organisation, called Universal Brotherhood, and explained that from now on the name “Theosophical Society” would apply merely to a small “literary department” within the Universal Brotherhood organisation. She expressed the wish that this literary department would focus less on the works of H. P. Blavatsky and William Judge from now on. Universal Brotherhood’s main aim and character was to be focused on charitable activities, humanitarian outreach, altruism, the arts, and education, albeit with Tingley as the constantly adored and ever-present figurehead.

So when it is sometimes said that Tingley led the Point Loma Theosophical Society, that expression is just for sake of contemporary clarity, seeing as Gottfried de Purucker renamed that organisation “Theosophical Society” upon succeeding Tingley as its leader, after her death in 1929. It was this organisation which in 1951 would split (again over “Successorship” disputations) into the two societies known today as “The Theosophical Society – Pasadena” and “The Theosophical Society – Point Loma,” the latter of which is nowadays headquartered in the Netherlands. But, technically and accurately speaking, beyond February 1898, Katherine Tingley did not lead the Theosophical Society; on the contrary, SHE OFFICIALLY DISSOLVED THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY!

PART II – THE REFORMATION OF THE TRUE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

One might assume that the majority of the 6,000 attendees would strongly protest at this development. But they did not. Individuals whose names are still well known today among many Theosophists – such as Robert Crosbie (later the founder of the United Lodge of Theosophists) and Alice Leighton Cleather (later the co-founder of the Blavatsky Association and author of numerous books with Basil Crump) – were among the main signatories endorsing Tingley’s action. Crosbie, Cleather, and others, would later separate from Tingley’s organisation and fiercely criticise her character and actions but not until several years of deep devotion and subservience to her had passed. 

The official “histories” of the Theosophical Movement published by the United Lodge of Theosophists are unsurprisingly – but unfortunately – completely silent about Crosbie’s eight years (1896-1904) of zealous devotion towards Katherine Tingley – and which was rather extreme and fanatical, if one reads some of his letters to her, such as where he addresses her as “Bride of the Sword of Righteousness,” and also accounts by people such as A. E. S. Smythe and C. F. Willard of their experiences with Crosbie while all living at Point Loma – but are happy to denounce and lambast everyone else, including the minority of just 200 members who did have sufficient intuitive perception and clarity of thought at that time to stand up to Tingley and voice their resistance and opposition to the dissolution of the Theosophical Society and the granting of total autocracy. It was reported that these 200 were shouted down by the thousands of other attendees, with loud and aggressive boos and jeering. Realising that theirs was a lost cause among such a mesmerised mob mentality, they left the Convention and reconvened elsewhere. In the ULT version of Theosophical history, that minority was then “foolish” and “misguided” enough to start a new Theosophical Society organisation, which they claimed to be the reformation of the original Society, a notion which in the ULT perspective was merely a further proliferation of untheosophical “sectarianism.” But how can it be sectarian and untheosophical to take a stand for what is right and to take steps to rescue the Masters’ Work in the world?

It would later be claimed that it was actually Robert Crosbie who had performed such a noble task and that he did so in 1909 when founding the ULT. After his death in 1919, his closest colleague John Garrigues would write in “Theosophy” magazine and the pamphlet “The United Lodge of Theosophists: Its Mission and Its Future” that Crosbie alone understood and stayed faithful to the mission of WQJ and HPB, and that he alone fulfilled HPB’s famous last injunction to Theosophists to “keep the link unbroken,” which is understood to refer to the link of conscious connection and communication between the Theosophical Society and the Lodge of Masters. The historical records that have since become available to us paint quite a different picture and also render rather untenable Garrigues’ claim that Crosbie was the closest co-worker of Judge and his most trusted esoteric confidant. There is absolutely no evidence for such assertions but a great deal of evidence against it, including letters between Judge and Hargrove about the Boston Theosophists, including Crosbie. In reality, it was the Griscoms, Hargrove, and for a time Tingley, who fulfilled the roles in relation to William Judge which the ULT would imagine for Crosbie. It must be emphasised that there is no record at all of Robert Crosbie himself ever making such claims as these. If he did, he did so privately, and no-one knows anything about it. Most likely, it was John Garrigues who started it, at the same time that he declared that HPB, WQJ, and Crosbie can be likened to the Hindu Trimurti or Trinity: HPB the Creator of Theosophy, WQJ the Preserver of Theosophy, and RC the Regenerator of Theosophy.

Aside from the fact that the Master K.H. in his warning letter of 1900 to Annie Besant strongly cautioned her against developing a similar “Theosophical trinity” idea, consisting of herself, HPB, and the Master M., there are several factual errors in these delineations. Perhaps most serious is the complete dismissal, rubbishing, and negation of the stand taken by the 200 at the February 1898 Convention and their work that followed.

It is a matter of debate whether this group had the “right” to take the already established name “The Theosophical Society in America” for their subsequent efforts, or to change the name in 1908 to simply “The Theosophical Society.” In the traditional ULT view, they did not have such a right. But in their view, Katherine Tingley had no truly ethical or spiritual right to dissolve the Society, and in response to this they had the right – or, as they saw it, the duty and responsibility – to not allow the Theosophical Society and the sacrifices, labours, and teachings of HPB and WQJ to be snuffed out like that. This was, for them, a duty to the Masters, the Teachers, and to humanity. They thus did not perceive themselves as establishing a new Society but rather as continuing the existing Theosophical Society by rejecting Tingley’s actions.

This “new” (“reformed” would be a more accurate word) Theosophical Society counted among its comparatively small but international membership – which, as far as we know, never reached or exceeded 1,000, but peaked at around 600-700 – many influential and important Theosophists who had known and worked with either H. P. Blavatsky, William Q. Judge, or both, including:

Ernest Hargrove

Clement A. Griscom

Genevieve Griscom

Archibald Keightley

Julia Keightley (perhaps better known by her pen name of Jasper Niemand)

Charles Johnston

Vera Johnston (the niece of H. P. Blavatsky herself)

J. D. Buck

Franz Hartmann

Katharine Hillard

Thomas Green

A. H. Spencer

James Morgan Pryse

Elliott B. Page

William Main

Thaddeus P. Hyatt

Other prominent members included Henry Bedinger Mitchell, Theodora Dodge, John F. B. Mitchell, R. E. (Ray Ethan) Torrey, John Dewey, Rev. C. C. (Clarence Carroll) Clark, Ada Gregg, Paul Raatz, and S. V. La Dow.

Those with the greatest influence over the Society, and who were therefore its primary leaders, were the Griscoms, Hargrove, Charles Johnston, and Henry Bedinger Mitchell. For this reason, the Society is often referred to as the Hargrove Theosophical Society, Griscom Theosophical Society, or Johnston Theosophical Society, as a way of distinguishing exactly which Theosophical Society is meant. But none of these were its actual name. 

This Society also had its Esoteric School – which in its view was the same E.S. as that established by HPB, since in their view there had been no break with this in 1898, other than on Tingley’s part – whose Outer Head remained almost entirely anonymous and was never once named or identified publicly. But it is known that this Outer Head was Genevieve Griscom, who almost always used the pseudonym Cavé in her Theosophical work, both public and private. Although wishing to remain “in the shadows” and not have any attention drawn to her, she was nevertheless the beating heart and deepest inspiring force of the whole of this Theosophical Society or, as it would call itself (and with some legitimate justification), “The Theosophical Society.”

Very soon after the dramatic events of 18th February 1898 and the reformation of the Theosophical Society on its original lines, original programme, and original basis, Ernest Hargrove wrote one more letter to Tingley, which said in part:

“By Order of the Master you have ceased to be the Outer Head of the E.S.T. in the interior and true sense. The Outer Head to follow you has already been appointed by the Master.”

Decades later, in the pages of “Theosophical Quarterly,” the official magazine of that Society, he would state:

“Masters . . . can and do co-operate completely, in spite of initial disagreement, as one of them proved by assuming a great burden and so retrieving that which was almost lost, following Mrs. Tingley’s failure.”

Although it was never directly spelled out to the public, Genevieve Griscom’s – and thus The (New York headquartered) Theosophical Society’s – contact with the Masters was specifically, or at least primarily and fundamentally, with the Master Hilarion. (See Two Little-Known Letters from The Master Hilarion for more about him from original and reliable sources.) Although this Master was certainly involved with the Theosophical Society during the time of HPB and WQJ, as shown in the article just linked to, he was neither the main nor one of the main Adepts standing behind it and guiding it. That was chiefly the Masters Morya and Koot Hoomi of the Trans-Himalayan division of the Great Lodge or Brotherhood. 

As we wrote in that article regarding Hilarion, “Although working closely alongside Masters belonging to the Trans-Himalayan or Tibetan branch of the Brotherhood, his most direct occult connections seem to have centred – or still be centred – around such parts of the world as Egypt, Greece, Asia Minor, and the Middle East. As we will see, he was also engaged in important but almost entirely secret work in places such as Scotland and New York (USA). It thus seems safe to say that he is an Initiate particularly interested in and involved with the welfare of the Western world, or, speaking in terms of religions, the Christian, Islamic, and Jewish world(s).” The Trans-Himalayan Masters were certainly interested in the West too but often emphasised Their thorough “Easternness” and the gulf that existed between Their thought and approach and Western thought. The Master Hilarion, on the other hand, can be seen to have a much greater affinity with Western thought (of the right kind, of course) and the spiritual life and traditions of the West. He would explain via Genevieve Griscom that he was chiefly a part of the Egyptian Lodge of the Great Brotherhood, albeit Greek Cypriot by nationality.

If we are reading it correctly, Hargrove is saying in the above quote – in the deliberately reticent and cautiously expressed manner of one who knows much of such sacred developments but realises he cannot divulge much to the world in a very explicit manner – that as a result of “Tingley’s failure,” the Trans-Himalayan Masters, who until then were the main directing force behind the Society, chose to largely give up on it and leave it to its own devices. But one Master chose to sacrificially “assume a great burden” and become responsible for the remnants of the true Theosophical Society by retrieving or salvaging “that which was almost lost.” And this Master (Hilarion) brought this about through the agency of that Theosophist with whom he was already connected, namely Genevieve Griscom, or Cavé. Hargrove implies that there was “initial disagreement” among the Masters about this new and quite different arrangement (a disagreement on whose side he does not say) but that agreement and consent was finally reached.

It’s important to be aware that this reported connection with the Master Hilarion was not merely some psychic thing, let alone mediumistic. Numerous of the leading members made clear – to the very limited extent that they were permitted to publicly – that they knew experientially, for a fact, that this Master is physically alive in this physical world today. Numerous of those who salvaged the Society in 1898 had personally, physically met the Master Hilarion in their city of New York a decade previously, in the company of William Q. Judge. As Julia Keightley and her husband Archibald (one of HPB’s most beloved pupils in London and a staunch ally and defender of WQJ) explained in a letter to “The Irish Theosophist” magazine in 1895: “The Master “Hilarion,” . . . is known to have been in daily (physical) intercourse with Mr. Judge in 1888 in New York. . . . Those of us to whom the Master Hilarion is objectively, as well as psychically known, . . . Matter from him, whether “inspired” or objectively dictated, is in quite another style [than that of Judge].” (“Letters That Have Helped Me” p. 271-272)

And those who attentively and intuitively study and explore the “Theosophical Quarterly” will realise that Cavé was herself an advanced, insightful, practical occultist, and far from being a passive channel with no attainment or realisation of her own, as had largely been the case with Mabel Collins, who the Master Hilarion had used previously. But it unsurprisingly took time for her to get to this point. She was not yet there in early 1896 when Judge passed away. At that time, she was still only 27. This is what Hargrove and Mitchell are hinting at in such statements as:

“In 1896, Judge died, prematurely, worn out by the venom of the attacks to which he and the Society had been subjected. Mrs. Tingley was called upon to fill the gap, as others were not “ready.” . . . In 1897 [actually 1898?], . . . Mrs. Tingley was deposed, owing to her serious misuse of the position entrusted to her, . . .”

“[Judge] did his utmost to live, knowing that he was needed, as there had not been time in which to make ready his intended successor; but he was killed at his post; and so, in 1897-8 there came Mrs. Tingley’s debacle, in which the Society was all but destroyed.”

“Mrs. Tingley . . . She was intended to serve as a stop-gap. Mrs. Tingley failed, and then intrenched herself in her failure. Her new position had fostered her ambition and other very serious weaknesses. Consequently she was deposed by the order of those whom, from the beginning, Judge recognized as his Superiors and as the true Founders of the Theosophical Society.”

Lest one think that Cavé was simply yet another claimant to a position undeserved, we recommend reminding oneself of what was explained earlier regarding William Judge’s attitude towards her and the unrivalled esoteric trust he showed towards her in his final months of life. One could do a word search for griscom and re-read what was said.

By devoting a lot of time and energy to sifting through the issues of “Theosophical Quarterly,” reading attentively and intuitively, and connecting scattered details together, one discovers and begins to make sense of many precious hints half-buried throughout, especially regarding the Masters and Their Work. One is not likely to have much success in this, however, unless already well acquainted with the original Theosophical literature, as otherwise one will miss many veiled clues and not realise where to join the dots. We considered plainly spelling out for the reader’s benefit some of these things which we have garnered but then reflected on the fact that they must have been left scattered and veiled for a reason, possibly many reasons. If one truly wants and is capable of digging out such truths, one must do it for oneself and in the right spirit. If one isn’t willing, or doesn’t believe there’s likely to be anything there worth digging out, that is perfectly fine.

For those who may wish to take a look at “Theosophical Quarterly” or its predecessor “The Theosophical Forum” online, whether for this or any other purpose, the useful links are:

“Theosophical Quarterly” Vol. 1-35 (1903-1938) – all issues listed here 

Index Volume to Vol. 1-35 of “Theosophical Quarterly” – online here 

“The Theosophical Forum” Issues from February 1898 to April 1905 – listed here

In the United Lodge of Theosophists, one usually gets the impression that until Robert Crosbie started the ULT in 1909, the majority of HPB’s and WQJ’s books and writings were out of print, unavailable, and no longer regularly studied among any Theosophists. The picture that is painted is of Crosbie – and “he alone” – being the one who rescued Theosophy and restored the genuine Theosophical Movement. Until recently, we have firmly believed this and have spoken of Crosbie as “the man who rescued Theosophy.” But now we see and accept that this is just not the case. There is no denying that many of the ULT’s contributions to the modern Theosophical Movement have been, and still are, immense and very welcome. But many of the accomplishments it has claimed for itself actually belong to “The Theosophical Society” headquartered in New York. The list of books available from this Society from the late 1890s and early 1900s onwards – many of which were published by themselves – is virtually identical with the list of books later published by the ULT.  Naturally, there are no Robert Crosbie or B. P. Wadia books on the Society’s book list but this Society was “spreading broadcast the teachings of Theosophy as recorded in the writings of H. P. Blavatsky and William Q. Judge” when Crosbie was still at Point Loma, glorifying Tingley and obeying her commands. Such details need to be stated, for the sake of justice, transparency, and honesty, yet they are not intended to be an “attack” against Crosbie, since we consider the majority of his work and writings to be very valuable and useful, even in the present day.

Our two compilation articles titled Approaching Theosophy through the Intellect or the Heart and The “Original Lines” for Theosophical Work will give a good idea of the general approach to and understanding of Theosophy and the role of the Theosophical Society on the part of the “Griscom/Hargrove/Johnston” Theosophical Society. It was completely in line with the principles and approach of HPB and WQJ, and took special inspiration from the latter. Those compilations are almost entirely the words of HPB and WQJ but include some extremely important and inspiring passages from Julia Keightley. While adopting a scholarly approach to subjects when warranted, such as the study of world religions and translations of sacred texts, the Society also adopted a markedly mystical, practical, heart-centred, and devotional approach to Theosophy, much more than has any other Theosophical group. They asserted that whereas many Theosophists view Theosophy as a Doctrine and something to learn about, they viewed Theosophy as a Life and something to be experienced.

While it is quite well known that Robert Crosbie was part of Katherine Tingley’s “Universal Brotherhood” organisation and relocated from Boston to Point Loma within a year or two of that fateful Chicago convention, remaining there until 1904 when he realised or fully accepted that Tingley was not what he and so many others had initially believed her to be, it is mostly unknown that between his leaving Point Loma and starting the United Lodge of Theosophists, he joined the T.S.A. or “Theosophical Society in America,” as it was then still calling itself. This was in either 1906 or 1907, for in 1907 he was elected President for one year of a new Los Angeles based branch, called the Los Angelenos branch, which he and a number of others had founded. The opening of this branch and other details about it, including Crosbie’s role, were reported in “Theosophical Quarterly.” As far as can be seen, all was going well until the Society’s annual Convention in the first half of 1908, where it was decided to change the name from The Theosophical Society in America to simply The Theosophical Society. Crosbie and a very few others from the Los Angelenos branch could not accept this and immediately resigned. The majority of those Los Angeles members had no issue with the name change and reorganised themselves under the new name of the Pacific branch, which seems to have then carried on for another 30+ years. Then, in November of 1908, Crosbie and a handful of supporters would send out, to as many Theosophists as they could reach, the document reproduced towards the end of “The Friendly Philosopher” (p. 409-411) titled “TO ALL OPEN-MINDED THEOSOPHISTS.” This said:

“With the altruistic example of the Messengers [i.e. H. P. Blavatsky and William Q. Judge] and the inspiration of the Message, the Theosophical Society should have been able to stand alone and united.

“Unfortunately, history tells another story; disintegration began at once [after their deaths], and still goes on, and a grand opportunity to impress the world with the spirit and life of the Message has been lost, through neglect of the essentials and pursuit of non-essentials.

“The First Object — the most important of all — the others being subsidiary — has been lost sight of in its direct bearing upon all the changes and differences that have occurred. “To form a nucleus of Universal Brotherhood without any distinctions whatever” was, and is, the key to the situation. . . .

“It now remains for those who are able to take the words that express the never-dormant wish of her heart as the key-note of the present and future: “Be Theosophists, work for Theosophy,” and get together on that kind of a basis; for these are the essentials.

“The unassailable basis for union among Theosophists, wherever and however situated, is SIMILARITY OF AIM, PURPOSE, AND TEACHING. The acceptance of this principle by all Theosophists would at once remove all barriers. A beginning must be made by those whose minds have become plastic by the buffetings of experience. An agreement between such is necessary; an assembling together in this spirit.

“To give this spirit expression requires a declaration, and a name by which those making the declaration may be known.

“To call it The Theosophical Society would be to take the name now in use by at least two opposing organizations. To even call it a Society has the color of an “organization” — one of many, and would act as a barrier. The phrase used by one of the Messengers is significant, and avoids all conflict with organizations, being capable of including all without detriment to any. That phrase is:

“THE UNITED LODGE OF THEOSOPHISTS

“Members of any organization or unattached, old and new students, could belong to it without disturbing their affiliations, for the sole condition necessary would be the acceptance of the principle of similarity of aim, purpose, and teaching. The binding spiritual force of this principle of brotherhood needs no such adventitious aids as Constitution or By-Laws — or Officers to administer them. With it as basis for union, no possible cause for differences could arise; no room is found here for leader or authority, for dogma or superstition, and yet — as there are stores of knowledge left for all — the right spirit must bring forth from “Those who never fail” all necessary assistance. The door seems open for those who would, but cannot see a way. Any considerable number, living, thinking, acting, upon this basis, must form a spiritual focus, from which all things are possible.

“Local Lodges could be formed using the name and promulgating the basis of union, recognizing Theosophists as such, regardless of organization; open meetings; public work, keeping Theosophy and Brotherhood prominent; intercommunication between Lodges, free and frequent; comparing methods of work of local Lodges; mutual assistance; furtherance of the Great Movement in all directions possible; the motto: “Be Theosophists; work for Theosophy.” . . .”

Three months later, on 18th February 1909, Crosbie sent out another circular, announcing that the United Lodge of Theosophists, whose formation he had proposed, was now born into existence. Its expressed mission statement was, and is, “To spread broadcast the Teachings of Theosophy as recorded in the writings of H. P. Blavatsky and William Q. Judge.” Although continuing quite small and confined only to the USA during the remaining decade of Crosbie’s lifetime, it grew and spread exponentially around the world from the early 1920s, due largely to the efforts of Indian Theosophist B. P. Wadia, and is today the second largest and second most influential of all Theosophical groups, the largest and best known being “The Theosophical Society – Adyar,” in which Col. Olcott, Annie Besant, C. W. Leadbeater, and others, had been leading lights.

While all would agree that “the Theosophical Society should have been able to stand alone and united,” one could question how starting yet another Theosophical organisation (though the ULT has always claimed to be more of an “organism” than an “organisation,” since it deliberately lacks a large amount of organisational structure, centralisation, and bureaucracy) could be expected to resolve this. While it is true that organisational bureaucracy is often an unwelcome and unappealing distraction from the more important side of Theosophical work, we should not forget that HPB, WQJ, and Olcott – at the behest of the Masters – established an organisation called the Theosophical Society. This is thus presumably the name and the structure which they wished to perpetuate. They did not choose to establish an association operating on the basis that the ULT would adopt, nor did they choose to name it the “United Lodge of Theosophists.” Perhaps more importantly, HPB and WQJ never once defined Theosophy as meaning or being confined to their teachings and writings, like how Crosbie and the ULT would define, or rather re-define, the term “Theosophy.”

Anyone familiar with the traditional attitudes and approach of the ULT will quite readily notice, when carefully and thoughtfully reading the compilation The “Original Lines” for Theosophical Work that HPB’s and WQJ’s (and the Masters’) “original lines” and “original programme” for the work of Theosophy are in numerous respects the very opposite of those adopted and insisted upon by the ULT, even though the ULT believes itself the most faithful to the “original lines” etc. Crosbie and his colleagues also directly endorsed and sought to promote a “Theosophical Orthodoxy,” using this very term, whereas HPB and WQJ had directly and strongly warned against such a thing in passages well known to all Theosophists but which Crosbie and his supporters curiously always avoided mentioning or quoting. This is all shown in the article just linked to. It should also be pointed out that his above emphasis on the First Object of the Theosophical Movement – that ““To form a nucleus of Universal Brotherhood without any distinctions whatever” was, and is, the key to the situation,” – is exactly that of the Society from which he had just resigned.

So why did Crosbie resign from the newly renamed “The Theosophical Society” in 1908? What was it he so strongly objected to in this change of name? According to “Theosophical Quarterly” it was the idea that this organisation was publicly identifying itself as THE Theosophical Society – i.e. the one and only, and alone properly entitled to the unqualified, unelaborated name of The Theosophical Society – to which he took issue. Crosbie was strongly against sectarianism (although many have considered the ULT the most sectarian of all Theosophical associations, especially during the period from the 1920s to 1950s) and so he probably felt that this name change signalled a public embrace of sectarian attitudes with which he felt uncomfortable and of which he had already had long and painful experience under Tingley.

He surely must have already known that the so-called Hargrove/Griscom/Johnston Theosophical Society considered itself the only legitimate Theosophical group and held the actions and attitudes of all the others demonstrated that they had gone “outside of the Theosophical Movement,” i.e. become unfaithful to the vital, living principles on which the Masters had founded the Society. William Judge had said as much himself, with regard to what we today call the Adyar Society, declaring in print in 1895 upon he and the most loyally pro-Blavatsky Theosophists declaring organisational independence and autonomy after almost two years of the “Judge Case” persecutions and increasing attacks on HPB, that “The Theosophical Society . . . in Europe and India . . . has ceased to be a portion of the real theosophical movement.” (“The Judge Case,” “William Q. Judge Theosophical Articles” Vol. 2, p. 325) And we have already recounted how Katherine Tingley announced the very dissolution of the Theosophical Society, substituting in its place an openly autocratic and despotic “cult of personality” with a completely different (though not bad in itself) name . . . which seems, to us at least, quite clear that these organisations and their followers had stepped outside of the para-organisational, spiritual and ethical Energy or Consciousness (for want of a better word) referred to as the Theosophical MOVEMENT. If the distinction is still not clear, we recommend reading Judge’s short article titled “The Theosophical Movement.”

Besides its verifiable claim to upholding the original lines and original programme of the Theosophical Society, this group could also point to the fact – as Judge himself did – that the whole Theosophical Society had its birth in New York in 1875 (and called itself simply The Theosophical Society) and that by Judge and a few others maintaining an organisational core in that city after HPB and Olcott relocated to India at the end of 1878, the New York Society thus had a stronger claim than any to be the true “parent” society. As the group that chose to reject Tingley’s machinations of dissolution was an unbroken continuation of that same Society, it felt perfectly entitled to the name The Theosophical Society.

But the main reason for the change of name in 1908 was a much more practical one. It was explained that it was done in order to reflect the international nature of the Society. It now had branches in many countries and expecting them all to call themselves “The Theosophical Society in America” when they were not in America seemed unreasonable.

Nonetheless, when we look at the Theosophical world in the present day, over 115 years later, we cannot help but feel grateful that Robert Crosbie did leave the Society to start the ULT and that it is still alive and active in the present day, for The Theosophical Society headquartered in New York is sadly now long defunct, for reasons we will go into shortly.

One of the most striking features of this Theosophical Society was its increasing adoption of a Christian colouring, from around 1905 and especially from around 1908 onwards. This took the form of frequent mention of “The Master Christ,” also referred to as “The Western Avatar,” increasing usage of Biblical terminology and analogies, references to some of the leading members working in various ways with the established Christian Churches (the Griscoms, Hargrove, Mitchell, and others with the Episcopal/Anglican Church of the Ascension and particularly with its Chapel of the Comforter charitable mission, while Charles and Vera Johnston got involved with a local Russian Orthodox Church), and a great deal of focus in “Theosophical Quarterly” on the lives and work of Christian mystics, such as such as Thomas a Kempis (“The Imitation of Christ”), Teresa of Avila, Meister Eckhart, Francis of Assisi, Joan of Arc or Jeanne d’Arc, Jan van Ruysbroeck, John of the Cross, Margaret Mary and Francis de Sales (the Sacred Heart tradition), “The Cloud of Unknowing,” Brother Lawrence (“The Practice of the Presence of God”), Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, and more besides.

Usually, when we see a strong inclination towards and emphasis on Christianity and Christ in the historical development of the modern Theosophical Movement, it is a bad sign, and is really a psychically inspired, bizarre, and childish type of Christianity, with strong Roman Catholic and Jesuitical undertones or overtones. (Take for example Leadbeater and Besant and their “Second Coming of Christ” and Liberal Catholic Church, and the assertions and ideas of Alice Bailey and her supposedly “Tibetan” inspirer, who was clearly not Tibetan or even Eastern at all; Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy are another example, though far less connected with the nominal Theosophical Movement.) But we have to be careful not to react to and judge all such things from an anti-Christian bias or prejudice. Many students of H. P. Blavatsky’s teachings have such a bias, in varying degrees, but we do not believe this can reasonably be attributed to HPB or her writings but rather to people’s own negative experiences with the Christian Church and conventional Christian doctrine, or “Churchianity.” After all, HPB made such statements as these:

“Once I was in a great cave-temple in the Himalayan mountains, with my Master [i.e. the Master M. or Mahatma Morya]. There were many statues of adepts there; pointing to one of them, he said: ‘This is he whom you call Jesus. We count him to be one of the greatest among us.’” (from “A Meeting with HPB” by Charles Johnston)

“H. P. B. . . . told them [i.e. her Russian Orthodox Christian family] that her Master had a deep respect for the spirit of Christ’s teachings. She had once spent seven weeks in a forest not far from the Karakoram mountains [Note: Technically speaking, the Karakoram range is north of the Himalayas and is considered a Trans-Himalayan mountain range], where she had been isolated from the world, and where her teacher alone had visited her daily, whether astrally or otherwise she did not state. But whilst there she had been shown in a cave-temple a series of statues representing the great teachers of the world, amongst others:

“”A huge statue of Jesus Christ, represented at the moment of pardoning Mary Magdalene; Gautama Buddha offers water in the palm of his hand to a beggar, and Ananda is shown drinking out of the hands of a Pariah prostitute.”” (“Letters of H. P. Blavatsky” Part II, compiled and published by William Q. Judge, “The Path” January 1895)

“Jesus . . . the Theosophists . . . see in him, or the ideal he embodies, a perfect adept (the highest of his epoch), a mortal being far above uninitiated humanity.” (“A Word with Zero”)

“Theosophists, even those who are no longer, as those who never were, Christians, regard, nevertheless, Jesus, or Jehoshua as an Initiate . . . in whom they see one of the Masters of Wisdom.” (“Miscellaneous Notes” from “Lucifer” magazine, August 1888)

“Christ . . . [we regard him] as an Avatar like Gautama Buddha and other great adepts who became the vehicles or Reincarnations of the “one” Divine Influence.” (“On Pseudo-Theosophy”)

In light of such statements, how can any serious student of Theosophy recoil from legitimate mention and promotion of Christ and his teachings, even from those in the Four Gospels of the New Testament, which HPB in her lengthy and important series of articles titled “The Esoteric Character of The Gospels” repeatedly affirms to have an actual esoteric and mystical basis and origin?

The Master Hilarion informed Genevieve Griscom – and, through her, the others in the Esoteric School – that since one’s dharma or duty is what naturally presents itself to us, and “washes up at our feet,” so to speak, the greatest duty of Western Theosophists as regards the religious sphere is to help the Christian Church, both from without and within . . .for if Theosophists do not utilise in this direction the understanding and knowledge they have gained from their studies, and provide the help that is needed by the Church and Christians, who will? And who can? The Master explained that our duty to Buddhism, Hinduism, and other religions, is far less than to our own native religion, the religion of our own country and ancestors. It is not for no reason or to no purpose that we have incarnated in a Christian country or Christian part of the world this time around. It was said that such a course of action could not have been taken reliably, effectively, and constructively, had not 20+ years of study of H. P. Blavatsky’s writings cleared their minds of conventional Christian ideas, attitudes, and predilections, and enabled them to see and appreciate Christ and his teachings completely afresh and in a Theosophical light. 

“Theosophy is not a religion, but a philosophy at once religious and scientific; . . . the chief work, so far, of the Theosophical Society has been to revive in each religion its own animating spirit, by encouraging and helping enquiry into the true significance of its doctrines and observances. . . . The Theosophical Society has branches respectively composed of Buddhists, Hindoos, Mohammedans, Parsees, Christians and Freethinkers, who work together as brethren on the common ground of Theosophy; . . . the work it has undertaken — the revival of spirituality in religion, and the cultivation of the sentiment of BROTHERHOOD among men.” (H. P. Blavatsky, “Lucifer to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Greeting!”)

Further, the Master Hilarion disclosed that he is responsible for the oldest surviving religious-mystical Order in the West, known as the Order of the Living Christ. The Theosophical Society’s Esoteric School became renamed as the Order of the Living Christ, since entry into it now meant entry – at whatever degree – into the broader field of the Master’s own Order. Genevieve Griscom and her husband Clement became responsible, until the latter’s somewhat untimely death, for guiding and mentoring the new and existing disciples and would-be chelas in the Esoteric School, which was now divided into the Outer Court and Inner Court of the Order of the Living Christ. The Inner Court was the Esoteric Section’s Inner Circle and was constituted of seven people: Genevieve Griscom, Clement Acton Griscom, Jr., Ernest Hargrove, Charles Johnston, Archibald Keightley, Henry Bedinger Mitchell, and Theodora Dodge.

What the nature of the connection was between the Master Hilarion and the historical Jesus Christ – and thus the relation of the former to “The Master Christ” often spoken of in “Theosophical Quarterly” – was never directly spelled out to the public. As mentioned, even the name “Hilarion” never even appeared in the Society’s magazines or publications. Members of the Order of the Living Christ were informed but were apparently required not to divulge it to others. With attention and intuition, however, the earnest student who pores over the pages of the “Theosophical Quarterly” and the three volumes of “Fragments” recorded or transcribed by Cavé will be able to work it out. Some may even realise it simply from reading this article. What can be directly asserted, however, is that the claims about the two (?) Masters – the “Master Jesus” and the “Lord Christ-Maitreya” – originated by C. W. Leadbeater and widely popularised in the present day through the works of Alice Bailey, are completely erroneous and mistaken and no more than astral fictions. They have nothing in common with the Order of the Living Christ.

The Society held the view that seeing as the Adyar Society’s “Christianisation” at the hands of Leadbeater and Besant and certain Vatican-leaning Bishops began a mere year or so after the work of The Theosophical Society and its Esoteric School took on a Christian colouring courtesy of the Order of the Living Christ, this was a deliberate reactionary counterfeit by the Black Lodge or Dark Brotherhood, to thwart or at least lessen the spread, scope, and effectiveness of the real work for Christianity, as well as to leave a bad taste in people’s mouths for any type of Christianity-oriented Theosophy.

The New York headquartered Theosophical Society did not proclaim the Master Christ to be the Master of all other Masters, nor Christianity to be the supreme religion or the only way, nor did it view the Roman Catholic Church and Vatican in anything but a negative light, although it did acknowledge that many of the most inspired and inspiring Christian Mystics of history happened to have been Catholics. The latter is probably so because mysticism has usually been very frowned upon by all branches of Christianity other than the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. No member of the Society was expected or obligated to share the affinity for mystical Christianity adopted by many of the members, just as no member was expected or obligated to accept anything other than the Universal Brotherhood or Oneness of humanity. It also did not lessen its study and attention to the sacred texts and traditions of the other religions of the world, although it often sought to demonstrate the remarkable closeness – in some cases nearly an identicality – between scriptures as seemingly different on the surface as the Bhagavad Gita of Hinduism and Revelation, the last book of the Christian New Testament. The Society also recognised the Order of the Living Christ to be just one branch of the Masters’ Brotherhood but the one most actively involved with the West. It also did not assert that the so-called “Second Coming” of Christ was at hand.

We need to emphasise that last point, as there are a few websites giving serious misinformation about this. The Order of the Living Christ did build and own a large house and complex in New York for purposes of spiritual retreats and related activities. When this property, now completely refurbished, went on the market a few years ago, several tabloid newspapers claimed that it had been built with expectation of Christ’s imminent Second Coming and that members believed he would live in that house and rule the world from New York. That is not what they believed at all and seems to merely be deliberate sensationalism in order to sell newspapers. It’s possible that it was an assumption made from the wording of the name “Order of the Living Christ” or, as suggested by comparing historical documents, originating in the gossip, speculation, and misinformation of neighbours as to the Order’s activities. In “Theosophical Quarterly” it was made very clear that in line with H. P. Blavatsky’s teachings, the Society did not expect any type of “Second Coming,” arrival of a Messiah figure, or Avataric Incarnation, until the far distant future, vastly beyond the span of our present lives.

All of this was understood to be a facet of the work of the New Era of Western Occultism, about which William Judge had spoken so often during his final few years.

“It is not the desire of the Brotherhood that those members of the Theosophical movement who have, under their rights, taken up a belief in the messengers and the message should become pilgrims to India. To arouse that thought was not the work nor the wish of H.P.B. Nor is it the desire of the Lodge to have members think that Eastern methods are to be followed, Eastern habits adopted, or the present East made the model or the goal. The West has its own work and its duty, its own life and development. Those it should perform, aspire to and follow, and not try to run to other fields where the duties of other men are to be performed. . . . She [i.e. H. P. Blavatsky] knew, and you have been told before, that high and wise servants of the Lodge have remained with the West since many centuries for the purpose of helping it on to its mission and destiny.” (WQJ, “Letters That Have Helped Me” p. 73-76)

PART III – THE INDRAWAL OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

By 1935, Clement Griscom, Archibald Keightley, Julia Keightley, HPB’s niece Vera Johnston, Charles Johnston, and numerous others had passed away. Theodora Dodge was to pass away the following year. Ernest Hargrove, now 65, was to pass away four years later. Genevieve Griscom was now 67 and Henry Bedinger Mitchell 61. There were now few new members each year and the older ones were fairly rapidly dying off. However, the Society still had an international presence, still had a comparatively high readership for “Theosophical Quarterly,” was still publishing and selling books, and still making an impact, even if lesser than before. 

The midway point between 1900 and 1975 was also fast approaching. In his article “The Closing Cycle,” William Judge had written:

“Nothing is more plain than that H. P. Blavatsky said, on the direct authority of the Masters, that in the last twenty-five years of each century an effort is made by the Lodge and its agents with the West, and that it ceases in its direct and public form and influence with the twenty-fifth year. Those who believe her will believe this; those who think they know more about it than she did will invent other ideas suited to their fancies.

“She explained, as will all those who are taught (as are many) by the same Masters, that were the public effort to go on any longer than that, a reaction would set in very similar to indigestion. Time must be given for assimilation, or the “dark shadow which follows all innovations” would crush the soul of man. The great public, the mass, must have time and also material. Time is ever. The matter has been furnished by the Masters in the work done by H. P. Blavatsky in her books, and what has grown out of those. She has said, the Masters have said, and I again assert it for the benefit of those who have any faith in me, that the Masters have told me that they helped her write The Secret Doctrine so that the future seventy-five and more years should have some material to work on, and that in the coming years that book and its theories would be widely studied. The material given has then to be worked over, to be assimilated for the welfare of all.”

It was frequently remarked in “Theosophical Quarterly” that of all the end-of-century efforts or centennial attempts by the Masters so far, the attempt led by HPB for the period of 1875-1900 was the only one which had managed to successfully survive and carry over into the following century, in this case the 20th. All the other efforts – such as that involving St. Germain, Mesmer, and Cagliostro at the end of the 18th century – had ended in failure of various sorts, some years prior to the turn of the century.

To the Master and his trusted chela Genevieve Griscom, it would be a disastrous and tragic thing if The Theosophical Society were to ever lose contact – i.e. conscious contact and communication – with the Lodge of Masters. It was always the Masters’ wish that They be able to guide, direct, and influence the Society from behind the scenes, through one or more suitably trained and reliably qualified agents and representatives. Without that, even if the Society were to continue, and even if its Esoteric School were to remain in operation, it would all have become a purely exoteric organisation, for HPB’s dying instruction to “Keep the link unbroken!” would not have been heeded or adequately complied with. 

While most Theosophical groups do not seem particularly bothered at the prospect – or realisation – of their leading members, influencers, and decision-makers having no vital, conscious Mahatmic connection, the New York headquartered Theosophical Society did not wish to continue existing if such a scenario should one day come about.

Since the surviving leaders were well aware that neither of them would still be alive by the time the Masters’ next major public effort was due, in 1975, and as they recognised that their advancing age – in an era where general life expectancy was ordinarily 10 to 15 years less than it is today – meant that any of them, Genevieve included, could potentially die quite soon, a bold and decisive course of action was agreed upon: INDRAWAL.

Although one might assume from the similarity between the terms “indrawal” and “withdrawal” that they carried the same meaning, this was not so. 

The planned indrawal of The Theosophical Society was a gradual lessening and reduction of outer, public work and activities, eventually resulting in entire dissolution of the exoteric work, aside from book sales and publishing, which continued into the 1950s. (Along with the main texts of HPB and Judge, plus “The Occult World” and “Esoteric Buddhism” by A. P. Sinnett, and the three main works attributable to the Master Hilarion through Mabel Collins – “Light on The Path,” “Through The Gates of Gold,” and “The Idyll of The White Lotus,” the Society had also published a few works by some of its own members, such as the three small volumes of “Fragments” by Cavé, i.e. Genevieve Griscom, translations of the Bhagavad Gita, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Crest-Jewel of Wisdom, Upanishads, and a few other works by Charles Johnston, an influential pamphlet titled “Meditation” by Henry Bedinger Mitchell, “Letters to Friends” by Mitchell under the pseudonym of John Gerard, and a few short books and pamphlets by Julia Keightley, Archibald Keightley, Katharine Hillard, and others. Most of Johnston’s works are in print today – largely due to the efforts of a Canadian associate of the United Lodge of Theosophists – but the others are long out of print, although Julia Keightley’s Theosophical writings have just recently been brought back into print in one big book, compiled by a member of “The Theosophical Society – Pasadena.”) “Theosophical Quarterly” ceased publication with its October 1938 issue. In 1943, the Society held its final annual Convention, where it was proposed and agreed upon to close down all branches in the USA and the various other countries. Members had known since 1935 that that day would probably come, as it was at the Convention in that year that Ernest Hargrove first spoke of the Society entering a phase of indrawal.

So far, this might just sound like withdrawal and a giving up. But it’s important to realise that it was not intended for the indrawal to be permanent. It was hoped and anticipated that the Society would re-emerge into public operation and activity sometime around 1975. The intention was that in the intervening years, the freedom from the busy exoteric activities and labours of the Society would enable members to have more time and energy to devote in a very serious and intense way to their own inner progress and development, so that at least one of the younger members would be able to succeed in attaining chelaship and thus conscious connection, contact, and communication with the Masters. If this could be achieved, the future resuscitation, success, and progress of the Society would be ensured and it could continue healthily for years or decades after Genevieve Griscom and others had left the scene. If the Society were not to ever re-emerge, the world could take it that the members aspiring to chelaship had failed and that the indrawal had indeed ended in a withdrawal. Sadly, that is what happened.

It cannot be denied that a Theosophical society or organisation devoid of conscious contact with the Masters could still do good work and benefit and inspire many people. But, comparable to a soulless human being, if the connection were not to be regained by a certain point, it would be inevitable that things would go downhill in the long run, and that the organisation would be heading irretrievably towards deterioration and disintegration, even though it might take decades or even a century or two to fully reach that point. This ought to serve as a warning and a motivating force for all Theosophists of the present day, many of whom – even in the United Lodge of Theosophists – have become very complacent with regard to the Masters and the seriousness and urgency of the Path to Them.

Towards the end of HPB’s life, she transcribed a message – almost certainly from the Master M., although it could possibly have been the Master K.H. – which did not mince its words about the condition and the inevitable future of the Adyar-led Theosophical Society presided over by Col. Olcott. To their credit, that Society published this letter or message a few decades later in the first volume of “Letters from The Masters of The Wisdom.” We should not imagine that what is said in it has the potential to only apply to the Adyar Society. On the contrary, it can and will apply to any Theosophical group that “loses touch” (if it even genuinely had it to begin with). The Theosophical Society headquartered in New York were not willing to have such a disastrous fate befall them, especially as they saw themselves as the one real and original Theosophical Society founded at the behest of Masters in 1875, the cataclysmic degeneration of which would be the greatest of tragedies and most catastrophic of disgraces.

Referring back to the message from the Master to HPB, this said in part:

“Olcott . . . wants to know why? Because the Society has liberated itself from our grasp and influence and we have let it go – we make no unwilling slaves. He says he has saved it? He saved its body, but he allowed through sheer fear, its soul to escape, and it is now a soulless corpse, a machine run so far well enough, but which will fall to pieces when he is gone. . . . it is no longer either a brotherhood, nor a body over the face of which broods the Spirit from beyond the Great [Himalayan] Range.”

Let us now see some of the exact words and explanations about indrawal from the last few volumes of “Theosophical Quarterly.”

“All of these outside organizations [i.e. the other Theosophical groups] have carried on public propaganda as if the Law of Cycles did not exist, that is to say, in spite of the turn of the tide, in spite of the indrawal of the spiritual forces which were poured out, through H.P.B. and Judge, during the last quarter of the century. If further evidence were needed, this alone would show how deliberately misguided they have been. [Note: Hargrove is referring to the understanding by this Society of such statements as found in WQJ’s articles “The Closing Cycle” and “Will Masters’ Help Be Withdrawn in 1897 until 1975?” which they saw as indicating that Theosophical “propaganda” or promotion and promulgation should not be as vigorous, constant, and zealous between 1900-1975 as in the closing quarter of the century, since in WQJ’s words it is the closing quarter which is the time for sowing, and the ensuing 75 years the time for maturing and reaping of that which was sown. The Society did not take this to mean literal inactivity but rather a deliberate “dialling down of the tempo,” for want of a better expression.] It cannot be stated too often that the true Movement must indraw, away from the world, back toward the Lodge, as the spirit leadeth. It is our function, so far as possible, to draw the world after us, — the best that is in the world, in any case.”

“Speaking this morning of indrawal, I said that the gulf between the world and The Theosophical Society is steadily increasing, and must of necessity increase. Have you thought of what happened after the death of the Master Christ? His apostles retired into an upper room, away from the world, and there prayed and meditated, — the women with them. In the Acts of the Apostles it is said that there were a hundred and twenty of them in all; not a large body of people, but dynamic, because they were united in faith and purpose, — lifting up their hearts, waiting, expecting, believing. They were obeying the law of the spirit at the point between two cycles; and as we, in obedience to the same law, indraw more and more, — the life of the Society will tend to correspond more closely with that meeting of the hundred and twenty in the upper room, apart from the world. There will be practically no propaganda; the activity will be inner rather than outer, — with the duty mutually to keep alive the fire of real desire, of true aspiration, as we wait, watch and prepare for the coming of the [1975] Messenger. Therefore, let us forget numbers, let us separate ourselves from the obsession of quantity. A hundred and twenty people to start a world-wide religion: more than enough! And in our case, a dozen would be enough. But what a great and marvellous function it is that this Society will have to perform, having the vision, so to live, so to aspire, so to will, as to draw down from heaven the supreme gift that the world unknowingly awaits.

“Let us make ready for that; let us learn how to give the whole of ourselves to one spiritual desire, and thus become able to wield the power that will have been placed in our hands. Once we achieve that, the Society will no longer be as a voice crying in the wilderness, but, instead, a lightning rod, a conductor, drawing into every yearning heart the celestial fire which alone can redeem the world, which alone can lift humanity from the hell it has created, to the new heaven and new earth we were promised from the beginning.” (Ernest Hargrove, Speech at the 1934 Convention of The Theosophical Society, “Theosophical Quarterly” Vol. 32, p. 57, 63)

“In 1875 the Society was founded. In 1891, only sixteen years later, H.P.B. died; and almost immediately the attacks began to which the Society was made vulnerable by Mrs. Besant’s vanity and ambition, — proving again the age-old truth that where vanity is, there loyalty cannot be. As they came to a head, they swept Mrs. Besant and her following from the Movement, to revolve around it thereafter as a baleful, psychic moon. This was registered in the Boston Convention of 1895, in which the Society in America became free from Adyar. But within a year Judge died. He was scarcely forty-five years old, and it was only twenty-one years since the Society was formed. In that brief time he had made himself what he was, and had laid the firm foundation upon which all we have has been built. He did his utmost to live, knowing that he was needed, as there had not been time in which to make ready his intended successor; but he was killed at his post; and so, in 1897-8 there came Mrs. Tingley’s debacle, in which the Society was all but destroyed. It was the end of the cycle, the crucial period precisely foretold by H.P.B. in her last words to the Society, — the Message she addressed to the Convention of the American Section held in 1891, three weeks before her death. The Message was reprinted in the QUARTERLY for July, 1934, where all may read her prayer that if the Movement were to fail, she might not be here to see it. We know that though it was brought to the very brink, it did not fail, but was carried over the crisis and the end of the century, into a cyclic phase it had never entered before. This was ushered in, as we know, through a period of indrawal and of silence, preparatory to the new advance which was begun with the founding of the QUARTERLY in 1903, and the resumption of the meetings here in New York. This period of silence, marking the transition from one cyclic phase to another, the in-breathing that must come between out-breathings, has very special significance for us now. . . .

“Looking forward, as it is our duty to do to-day, to what lies before us, I can see nothing that seems of greater moment than that we should realize the meaning and necessity of the indrawal to which the cycle is pressing us. We have to dispense with the crutches of outer aid on which we have leaned, and learn to look within instead of without. We have to enter into emptiness and silence, until we learn to hear the Voice of the silence and to open ourselves to the new life that flows from above. We are drawing near to the moment of opportunity and of crisis, when the old personal life must be laid aside and the life of chelaship be begun. . . .

“So we come to our opportunity: to the indrawal to which the cycle leads us, to the silence through which we must pass to a new inspiration and a new order of life. It is not the first time that the Society has passed through such a period. Many of us remember the years from 1898 to 1903, and that the Movement came forth from those years, purer and stronger and with clearer light for the Masters’ work. So, if we do our part, it should be with us in the years ahead.” (Henry Bedinger Mitchell, Speech at the 1935 Convention of The Theosophical Society, “Theosophical Quarterly” Vol. 33, p. 41, 48, 49)

“I said this morning that we are not at this moment in trenches. I said that the time might come when we should have to dig ourselves in, when, in other words, the very existence of the Society will be hidden from the surface of the earth, cut down to the root. What do you do with a vine? What do you do with many another tree or shrub? You prune, prune — and you must prune if you are to preserve the root alive. And what will be accomplished in this case is to preserve the root alive, that there may be new branches, and that, in due season, those branches may bear fruit. Go to the Parable in the New Testament, and you will see much of the hidden meaning. In other words, to make it specific, the day probably will come when there will be no more public meetings, no more QUARTERLY as we now know it, no more Conventions. There will be something corresponding to (only corresponding to) that period after the death and resurrection of Christ, when the disciples gathered in an upper room and waited for the coming of the Holy Ghost, praying, waiting for that which was promised and which came. These things are spoken of to-day that they may be understood later. Do not make the mistake of supposing that the Movement has been snuffed out, or that it has ended in failure, if you find that it is being cut down to the root. Indrawal means the transference of energy from the outer to the inner; it means the perpetuation of what otherwise would die. Would you wish a simulacrum, a decaying shell, to survive? There are enough shells of that kind, masquerading as theosophical societies, already in existence. It is we who must “keep the link unbroken”; we who, by living in the root, by keeping our hearts’ energies in the root, will preserve its life that it may be ready to put forth branches and to bear fruit when the Master-gardener appears.”  

“I am anxious that there shall be no misunderstanding on the subject of indrawal. I spoke of the time, almost certainly coming, when there would be further pruning to do, when outer activities in more senses than one would have to be cut down to the root. That is not a negative process. It is a positive process. What it really means is discipleship. In other words, if we would form part of the root and continue to form part of the root, we must of necessity become disciples, or rather, I should say, recognize the kind of disciples we already are — because discipleship is a very comprehensive term. . . . All of us are disciples of something, of some idea. We may be a disciple of an elemental such as the Golden Calf, or we may be a disciple of “learning” and no more . . . At any rate, we have to determine the nature of our discipleship. Members of The Theosophical Society are almost alone in the world in knowing that real discipleship, that is to say, a desire to become a disciple of the Lodge — is an immediate possibility. The Theosophical Society is the outermost door leading toward that possibility; but discipleship is not a matter of taking degrees or of signing documents. Discipleship is an attitude of the heart, a spirit, a persistent purpose, a life. If you will turn to the later pages in Volume I of Letters That Have Helped Me, you will find much said there in regard to the way in which any individual can constitute himself a disciple. If you will turn to some of the later Fragments in Volume I, you will find a great deal said on the same subject. Therefore, no one is left in the dark as to how to begin. And of one thing you may be certain, that when you are ready, your Master will meet you more than half way. It was he who started you on that path; it is his life in you that has carried you forward; it is he who awaits with eagerness the moment when he can wisely reveal himself to you. For ever and everywhere, Masters are looking for disciples, for those who will help them in their work. There is no thought of exclusion, far from it; but we must make ourselves ready, and we must begin where we are, — not at the top. . . . We have opportunities to learn from all kinds of sources. We are surrounded by books of instruction. There are plenty of members of The Theosophical Society who probably know more than we do from their years of membership or study; know something about the conditions that lead to self-knowledge, to self-understanding, to ultimate union with the Higher Self. But the fact remains that wherever we begin, whatever stage we have attained, that door is wide open for all who would enter, — for all who would enter if they are willing to pay the price. And that price has been intimated l already. They must leave self behind. They must fight self daily and during every hour of every day. They must fight depression, and self-assertion; timidity, and arrogance. They must try to live in the Eternal, — to live for the things that do not change with time, to live to please their Master, not to please themselves. Every one of us contains that supreme possibility.” (Ernest Hargrove, Speech at the 1935 Convention of The Theosophical Society, “Theosophical Quarterly” Vol. 33, p. 64, 75)

“It was stated at the last Convention that the time might come when we should have to dig ourselves in, when the very existence of the Society will be hidden from the surface of the earth, cut down to the root; that the day will probably come when there will be no more public meetings, no more QUARTERLY as we now know it, no more Conventions. This statement startled and, perhaps, dismayed some of our members, in spite of the care that was exercised to prevent misunderstandings and unwarranted fears over the implications of what was said. For example, we were told that we should not make the mistake of supposing that cutting down to the root will mean that the Movement is being snuffed out, or has ended in failure; but, on the contrary, that indrawal means transference of energy from the outer to the inner, — the perpetuation of what would otherwise die; that the process is not a negative, but a positive one; that what it means, in short, is discipleship. Thus it was made abundantly clear that if we wish to form part of the root — the “ nucleus” — we cannot toy with the idea of discipleship; we must embrace it whole-heartedly, with singleness of purpose and with fixity of attention and will. . . .

“How, then, can we turn this opportunity of indrawal into a positive process? We should regard it as a gift from the Masters, — an opportunity to learn and to grow in understanding. After a cycle of inspiration and help through the QUARTERLY, Branch meetings and the Annual Conventions of the Society, we should have been able to store up within ourselves material which would serve to transform our lives completely if we made use of but a small portion of what we have received. Year after year at our Conventions, delegate after delegate has expressed appreciation and gratitude for the help and inspiration received from the QUARTERLY. If all outer activities of the Society should cease, the thirty-two volumes of the QUARTERLY already published contain all and more than any of us need to work with indefinitely, if we will but use the gifts that have been poured out upon us with unselfish love and unsparing devotion, and show our appreciation by a more determined effort to embody the ideals which they hold before us.” (H.G., “Indrawal: Our Great Opportunity,” “Theosophical Quarterly” Vol. 33, p. 151-152)

“Despite all that has been said in the last few years, upon the necessity of indrawal and upon what it must be expected to involve, it is doubtful if this phase of the cycle has been understood throughout the Society. It is apparently viewed very negatively, as though it were an interruption of the “real”, effective, understandable work of the Movement. It is envisaged in terms of deprivation rather than of gain, in terms of loss of what we have had in the past, — loss of leaders, loss of teaching and guidance, loss of meetings and companionship, loss of the QUARTERLY, withdrawal of inspiration, help and support. In short, I think the prospect is regarded very much as one might look forward to a cold, empty, deserted house, through whose bare rooms we shall wander, lonely and desolate, where we used to be welcomed with love and cheer. 

“Indrawal may, indeed, involve any or all of the deprivations thus anticipated; but to see it in those terms is to see it falsely. It is to see it from below, not from above, and from the point of view of self-assumed failure (quite gratuitously assumed) instead of success; from the point of view of what is surrendered rather than of what is gained. . . .

“Why is it that the indrawing cycle is so misconceived? I think there are three contributory causes. There is, first, sheer laziness: the laziness that has grown used to things as they are and does not wish to change, and the laziness of mind that assumes as its own view, without bothering to examine or challenge it, the instinctive reactions of the lower nature, which never willingly surrenders itself and which shrinks from all sacrifice, no matter what may be gained of opportunity and achievement. Wherever we have permitted this to mislead us, we know what must be done to correct and clear our sight.

“The second cause of confusion is, I think, a misinterpretation of the historical record, caused by our failure to remember that never before, in our civilization, has the Theosophical Movement been carried over into the indrawing cycle. Always in the past, the centre established in the last quarter of the century has had to be withdrawn, or has disintegrated, before the opening of the new, so that the Lodge has not heretofore had a centre in the world during the inbreathing cycle such as it has had in the outbreathing. The result of this has been that the currents of the inbreathing of spirit have largely passed over the world rather than through it, and the world itself has been much less affected by the inbreathing than by the outbreathing. This fact, perceived without being analyzed, can easily prompt the erroneous inference that the one cycle is less dynamic than the other. It is only in our own day, in the success that has carried our Movement over the end of the century and these thirty-six years into the new, that we can really observe the effect of the inbreathing when its currents draw through the world by virtue of a Lodge centre having been maintained in it.

“The third factor might be considered as the reverse aspect of the second; for as the failure of the Movement in the past prevented the indrawing currents from manifesting their full effects in the world, so now the success of the Movement in entering new ground since the beginning of the century, has overlaid the normal, major cycle of indrawal, with a secondary, minor cycle of outgiving, whose effects, experienced close at hand, have not been distinguished, by many of our members, from those of the main cycle upon which they have been superposed. An advancing wave has obscured a receding tide. . . .

“If the Lodge Messenger [working publicly in the closing quarter of a century], and those who may have come with him from the Lodge, be successful in their outgiving, it kindles in their pupils an induced, indrawing current of aspiration, flowing from the world back toward the Lodge; and if, in its turn, this current be successful in reaching its goal, it results immediately in a new outgoing, — a new outbreathing cycle, established by the new chelaship, being thus superposed upon the indrawing phase of the primary cycle.

“This is what we can trace in our own Movement following the turn of the primary cycle in 1898 to 1900; and again, something more than a decade later, in 1911, when, once more, buried love came to rebirth and consciousness, and renewed again, just twenty-five years ago, an outgiving cycle of Lodge force and teaching. It is well that we should understand clearly this relation between cyclic law and individual lives, that it may bring home to us the truth that the continuance of the Theosophical Movement depends not upon some abstraction, but upon our own individual lives and effort, — upon your success with yourself, upon whether you care enough that a Lodge centre should be maintained in the outer, Western world, and the teaching of H.P.B. and Judge, and the others to whom we owe so much, be preserved as living teaching of a living truth. It must be in individual hearts that chelaship is kept: not in masses nor abstractions, but in individuals.

“To attain to chelaship is to attain to union with the Lodge. Therefore, so long as Lodge chelas are in the world, the Lodge has a centre in the world, a fulcrum for its lever, . . . Indrawal, surely; but indrawal should now mean to us something more and other than it appears to such as have approached it negatively. Whether there can be continuance of outgiving must depend upon whether love and chelaship can be brought anew to self-consciousness and rebirth. But whether there be outgoing or not — continuance of the QUARTERLY, meetings, conventions, or not — there must surely be ingoing, deeper and deeper into our own being. Whether or not we continue to talk and to write, we shall certainly have to be; and we can benefit the Movement through talking only as we first become what we wish to talk about. We must be honest above all, and distinguish between what we know and what we have heard. Theosophy was not given us in the outbreathing cycle merely to preach to some one else. It was given us to be applied, to be lived and proved in our own lives. That is the work of the indrawing cycle — to draw the teaching in. We have received the teaching. We need no more. We need to live what we have. Gravely let us recognize and accept the destiny to which we are called. . . . with the indrawing, we are not come to some pause or suppression of our great adventure, but rather to the moment of proof for which all our past has been preparation, all our teaching designed, — the point at which Theosophy and our own manhood alike come to their test. For from whatever standpoint we approach it, indrawal means that we go in to greater intensity of force, of responsibility, of opportunity; that the infant must become the child, the child the man, and the man be faced with the sharp cleavage between the world and the Lodge, between what he has been and the fulness of the stature of what it is open to him to become.”

“The great Lodge does not call us to ease, to comfort, to soft lives, . . . It calls us, it was said here last year, as Garibaldi called for men, offering them toil and privation, hunger and thirst, hardship, suffering and death, that a Cause may prevail. But where, for Garibaldi’s men, all this was to be where men could see it, we must remember that in our work none of it should show at all. We are not to be tossed about by the turmoil and the conflict; we are to still them by taking the shock, unmoved, upon ourselves. What else is the meaning of the “Guardian Wall”, of which the chela aspires to be a part?

“More and more our work must be inner work, — such work as I spoke of at the beginning: the work of meditation, of forming and holding clear-cut pictures of our ideal, and above all the work of giving ourselves wholly and completely to what we profess to love and serve. We have to give all. It is only at the limit of our being, only when, and where, we have done our own utmost, only at the frontiers of ourselves, that we can come into contact with what is beyond ourselves, and so can be aided by power higher than our own to grow into something greater than we have been.” (Henry Bedinger Mitchell, Speech at the 1936 Convention of The Theosophical Society, “Theosophical Quarterly” Vol. 33, p. 204-205, 208, 2011-212)

“However, no matter how complete the indrawal, members will still have an outer mission. Each one must find his own vocation for himself, though, generally speaking, every member should be able to do something toward meeting what is obviously the world’s greatest need, — religion; for it is the tragedy of the world to-day that it has no religion, no belief in a spiritual world more real than earth, no belief in evolution as divinely supervised and guided, no vision of anything worth while, worth striving for, beyond material prosperity and freedom from pain. We must saturate ourselves with the horror of this condition if we are to work with ardour for its removal. Desperate, in very truth, is the world’s need, — and therefore the need of the Masters, seeing that they must work through such as ourselves, through faulty human agencies (and so few even of these!), for the enlightenment of those many millions whose souls cry piteously for help, while their personalities, lost, without knowing it, in the fog of “progress”, look to economic panaceas and the false lights of science, to lead them to a Promised Land. . . . 

“Experience should have proved by this time that Theosophy is for the very few [Note: This is not meant to imply that Theosophy should not be made accessible to all, but rather an observation that only very few of those who encounter it recognise it for what it really is and respond accordingly]. At one time the Adyar Society claimed a membership of from twenty to thirty thousand, and we can see from them what happens when a mob is brought into touch with divine Truth: they pervert it, drag it down to their own level, see “spirituality” in psychic experience, worship a mob-leader like Mrs. Besant and a charlatan like “Bishop” Leadbeater. No: Theosophy is for the very few. But there is the whole world to be helped, and we, who were bom in the West, are responsible first for everything we can do on behalf of those among whom we live and who speak our own language. 

“Nominally, Christianity is the religion of our world. Our ancestors, for many hundreds of years, were brought up in that faith. Its terminology has been incorporated in all European languages. The most ignorant have at least heard of Christ. Yet actually, as we know, Christianity to-day is either rejected or seriously misunderstood; and because students of Theosophy have been given the clue to an understanding of all the great exoteric religions, and because Christianity clearly ought to be, and must in time become, in truth and in fact, the religion of the Western peoples, — part, in any case, of the outer mission of our members will be to bring the light and fire of Theosophy into Christian worship. As Master K. H. wrote many years ago: “You can do immense good by helping to give the Western nations a secure basis upon which to reconstruct their crumbling faith.”” (Ernest Hargrove, Speech at the 1936 Convention of The Theosophical Society, “Theosophical Quarterly” Vol. 33, p. 218-219)

“It has been said that, considering the indrawal now taking place, we should become more and more concerned with inner things. In other words, the combat to which we are urged is an inner conflict between the Self (the immortal part of us) and the self (the personality). How many of us are aware of any struggle taking place? If there is no struggle, then we may be sure that we have surrendered, lock, stock and barrel, to the enemy!” (H. G., “Man, Know Thyself!”, “Theosophical Quarterly” Vol. 34, p. 210)

“Now, that work, since the last Convention, has been one of indrawal in the true sense, — that is to say, both members and Branches have tried harder than ever to find and to work from their real centre: and we to-day must crown that effort; we must enter, so far as we can, the world of the Real, our true home; we must breathe, so far as we can, its rarefied atmosphere; we must feel as much as we can of its joy, must see something of its beauty, must draw as close as we can to its spirit and to those Great Ones who are that spirit and who reveal it; and, instead of losing ourselves in a “cloud of unknowing”, must check the present manner of our lives by what ought to be; must test our working Table of Values by the Table of Values which is changeless, and which all denizens of the Real world accept. The Real world! Deep in the hearts of all.” (Ernest Hargrove, Speech at the 1938 Convention of The Theosophical Society, “Theosophical Quarterly” Vol. 35, p. 203)

“Therefore, in so far as, even remotely, we are able to speak for those great ones, it is our duty to persist until we die, that this Society shall produce chelas, must produce chelas. Everything is at stake. There can be no question of telling this, that or the other person that he should become a chela. That is not the way things are done; it would be worse than folly. What we need is union of determination, so that, from within our ranks (no matter in whom), there shall arise this flower of chelaship for the Lodge. What appeal can be made, in the name of heaven, if not the appeal of Masters! They are not going to talk about their need. We can talk about their need, and we shall! That everyone here present shall leave this place determined to do all that he can — to make some small sacrifice that he has not made in the past; to give some time to spiritual reading, to think, and pray — that chelaship shall develop that somebody — or more than one — shall prove acceptable as victim: for Masters have never promised rewards; always they have sought out those who will be victims gladly; who are capable of the deepest joy if they can suffer for love’s sake.

“Thinking this over, two days ago, it seemed that it might be possible to word a Resolution that could be passed — not by the Society but by individual members — covering the prayer of this Convention, the hope of Masters for this Convention. I am going to read it to you, and if you do not like it, please say so. Anybody can be and remain a member in good standing, and can rightly, properly, if he choose, declare that this Resolution is not for him.

“Whereas, We, members of The Theosophical Society, founded by Masters, realize to some extent the dire need of the world for help and guidance which Masters of the Great Lodge alone can give; and

“Whereas, We realize also the imperative need of the Society to produce chelas from within its ranks if our link with the Lodge is to be kept unbroken, and if the Society is to continue to serve as a bridge between the Lodge and the world; therefore be it

“Resolved, That we, members present at this Convention [not necessarily all the members], humbly but unreservedly offer ourselves, individually and collectively, for service, promising to do our utmost to dedicate our lives, and to give our hearts and minds, to the purposes of the Lodge, while always praying that some among us, by the completeness of their self-giving, may make themselves acceptable as chelas, and may thus become able to complete the Work begun by H.P.B. and Judge.

“It was only possible, before this meeting, to confer briefly with the other members of the Committee on Resolutions, but both Dr. Torrey and Dr. Hohnstedt favoured it, naturally on the condition that it be explained that it does not commit the Society.” (Ernest Hargrove, Speech at the 1938 Convention of The Theosophical Society, “Theosophical Quarterly” Vol. 35, p. 203, 227-228)

“I am whole-heartedly in favour of the Resolution, but disappointed that it was not instigated by some of us who are younger as students of Theosophy, so that it could have come from the ranks of the Society, so to speak, instead of being handed to us, — as things have been, year after year, on silver platters, with spoons, — or, now and then, with cups, if we seemed able to quaff larger draughts. 

“Be that as it may; we now have our individual and collective and immediate objective before us in concise form: that new chelaship must be born within the ranks of the Society, if that body is to continue as a healthy, vigorous entity in the world. If each of us who considers himself a real member does not contribute to this end, I go so far as to say that we shall have failed in the purpose for which we incarnated this time, and shall have betrayed a Lodge trust.

“However, there is no need to fail. We are part and parcel of a time-honoured Lodge movement, not some spiritually-orphaned beings who are here for an isolated span of twenty-five or fifty years. What can we do to bring new chelaship to birth? One simple way is to cease to bury ourselves under our duties, to cease to identify ourselves with them, no longer to be self-busy. Our duties are staves in our hands if used aright, the very implements by means of which we can contribute directly towards bringing about this great birth. Let us, then, get from under our duties and into the atmosphere of the Lodge, — or of our own Master, if we know who he is; for, in the final analysis, it is he who will bestow this mysterious birth,  and upon the one who makes this choice possible. (Mr. Kobbé, Speech at the 1938 Convention of The Theosophical Society, “Theosophical Quarterly” Vol. 35, p. 203, 231-232)

“In the first place, it remains to be seen whether the Resolution will bear fruit as well as leaves. In the second place, if it should bear fruit, indrawal of the right kind would be insured, while, if it should bear no fruit — that is, if chelaship should not result — withdrawal rather than indrawal would be inevitable, for while some measure of indrawal would still be possible for the individual, the Society itself would have failed to keep the link unbroken. It would have been carried further into the century than has ever been done before, but, while this would be a great and lasting gain, continued existence on this plane, without the inner link, would be as objectionable as the continued life of a man who had lost his unifying soul.” (T. [Ernest T. Hargrove], “Questions and Answers,” “Theosophical Quarterly” Vol. 35, p. 262) 

“We know that century after century, during the last quarter, the Lodge has tried unsuccessfully to gather together a comparatively small group of people whose unselfishness and devotion would make it possible to keep the outer expression of the Movement alive in the world over the turn of the century. This time, however, the Society – founded by the Lodge Messenger, Madame Blavatsky, and by Mr. Judge and others, in 1875, as the present outer expression of the Movement – has been carried over the turn of the cycle and into the second quarter of the twentieth century. In other words, the reincarnation of the Movement has reached a “dead centre,” a point at which chelaship is necessary if the T.S. is to continue actively in the world.” (G.M.W.K., “Questions and Answers,” “Theosophical Quarterly” Vol. 35, p. 349)

The issue (October 1938) of “Theosophical Quarterly” from which the immediately preceding passage is quoted was to be its last. Its final article, “Questions and Answers” concludes (Vol. 35, p. 350) with these words by J.F.B.M.:

“To those who are seeking discipleship, seeking to fit them selves to aid in the work of Masters for the world, the belief in reincarnation gives significance to every event. Masters are interested not only in religion, but in every department of human activity — in music, art,  statecraft, diplomacy, business — in whatever affects the souls and characters of men. Those who would aid them, must be prepared to work in any sphere and must seek to fit themselves to do so. They must desire all abilities and all talents, and to eliminate all weaknesses. Every event then becomes an opportunity to gain or to strengthen some quality they would wish to have, to be able to place it at the service of their Master, to widen the field in which they can be used, and to make their service more efficient.”

~ * ~

Although The Theosophical Society entered into indrawal, its Esoteric School – the Order of the Living Christ – did not. The Order continued to function, just without its former exoteric body, which had partly served as a door and gateway to it for those sufficiently inclined and willing to take such a step. Thus, the O.L.C. continued to make use of their expansive Chapel Farm property in the Riverdale neighbourhood of the Bronx, both for esoteric and mystical purposes and to foster ties with the Episcopal or Episcopalian Churches of New York, particularly the already mentioned Church of the Ascension (and its Chapel of the Comforter, which it had essentially handed over to the Order), through which numerous priests and parishioners were awakened to and inspired by Theosophy and the writings of H. P. Blavatsky and William Q. Judge, towards a more heartfelt, mystical, and universal expression of their faith.

During the period of indrawal, Ernest Hargrove passed away in 1939. Later, Henry Bedinger Mitchell would pass away, in 1956. It only seemed fitting that Genevieve Griscom, the one who had directly or indirectly made all of it possible, after the events of early 1898, was to outlive all the others and see it through to the end. She passed away at the age of 90, in 1958.

In December 1957, towards the end of her life, she donated – in as anonymous a manner as she could – $400,000.00 to Harvard University’s Divinity School. $400,000 at that time was more or less equivalent to $4.5 MILLION today. This was not a purposeless gift but was accompanied by the request to use it to create and build the institution known as Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions. The funds were to be used to set it up on broadly Theosophical lines. Her identity as the donor was kept anonymous, as she wished, until more recently. The bequest was thus identified simply as coming from the Order of the Living Christ in conjunction with The Theosophical Society.

Whilst the indrawal sadly ended in withdrawal and this organisation or group is absent from the world today, and even completely unheard and unknown of by perhaps 99% of today’s Theosophists, the Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions lives on, extremely actively and influentially. Its website can be visited here.

“Much has been said recently of the need for chelas, for the Movement to develop chelas, — we know that at this time chelas cannot come over to us [i.e. a reference to HPB’s statement that “[After] December the 31st, 1899 . . . No Master of Wisdom from the East will himself appear or send anyone to Europe or America. . . . until the year 1975″]. Presently many of us who worked here before the cycle turned, will have passed away. There are those who have been on the front line, without one moment’s rest day or night, all these years. They cannot last forever — and the fight must go on. We must continue to advance; we cannot stop. . . . the agony would be that Those who trusted us, because They trusted us, would have failed. None of us could endure that!

“Now do you see what I mean — what my heart has been saying to your hearts all this while? Stop whining and snivelling in the stuffy corners of your life, and come out boldly, gladly, into the hardships of this glorious warfare. Stop thinking about yourselves, your pains, your trials, your feelings, least of all your conveniences. Think of Them and of Their sacrifices — which alone are the reasons that you are alive today, and not merely whirling dust specks in space — and in Their names and for Their sakes, each one his own, fight to redeem a dying world: and give, give, give everything!

“Then do you know what will happen? For the first time, for the first time, you will know what peace is, the peace that passeth understanding, the peace which the Master can only give to His dearly beloved disciple who is as Himself, the peace They know in the midst of Their toil and never-ending conflict.

“In reality, facing our own hearts, what does it matter what becomes of us, so long as Their cause triumphs? We can see so clearly that that is the only thing worth while. Reward! aye indeed, reward enough — if some day, all laid down, we shall catch the echo of that far distant cry:—

““Sounds as if some fair city were one voice
Around a King returning from his wars.”

“That is the spirit of chelaship; that is what makes a man a chela.

* * * * *

“In God’s name come over and help us. The need is so great!” (Cavé, “Fragments” Vol. 3, p. 145-147)

~ * ~

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