Theos-Talk Archives (January 2002 Message tt00123)

Steve: "Blavatsky claimed to be associated with the
Brotherhood of Luxor, which was not called that, and
which was clearly Randolph's "Rosicrucian
Brotherhood."
 


Another key/important person during the early TS was with its co-
founder Charles Sotheran.(On Sotheran, see Godwin, The Theosophical 
Enlightenment, Johnson, The Masters Revealed: Madame Blavatsky and 
the Myth of the Great White Lodge.)
In June 1875, he contributed a piece on Cagliostro and the living 
reality of alchemy and "Theurgic Magic" to the Spiritual Scientist, a 
struggling spiritualist journal that Madame Blavatsky and Colonel 
Olcott were attempting to transform into a vehicle for the promotion 
of occultism, and appended to his name "Societ Rosie Crucis"-a 
designation clearly intended to convey more than Sotheran's 
membership in the Soc. Ros. in Anglia. (From January through August 
1876 it ran as a regular feature a translation of Agrippa's De 
Occulta philosophia and also featured ,June 15, 1876, an excerpt from 
Randolph's old friend W.
Paigrave on the identification of the Nabatheans and the Sabaeans.)
After Madame Blavatsky's first major article "A Few Questions 
to ,HIRAF" on the "Oriental Rosicrucians" appeared in the same 
journal in July, the editor carefuily explained that the Soc. Ros. 
was merely a shell, like the Freemasons. Sotheran in turn defended 
his pretensions: "To those who are genuinely anxious, and seek with 
abnegation for information, I will freely impart-having freely 
received or becoming not being made-to those 
having authority +++++++++++++ and the ,M.C.' will my credentiais, 
engraved on the tablets, be freely displayed."(Pls note that the 
term "Oriental Rosicrucians" from Blavatsky bears a resemblance to 
Randolph again.)


In later years, Sotheran claimed that before the founding of the
Theosophical Society he and Madame Blavatsky, as he told a reporter, 
had known each other well "not only as advanced masons, but as 
Brothers of the Rosy Cross. In fact, it was first intended that the 
society organized for work on the exoteric plane should be openly 
known as what it really is (or was originally) a branch of the 
Rosicrucian Brotherhood."The Theosophical Society was in fact merely a
convenient front, erected because "it was not judged wise to take the
outer world into the secret of the Rosicrucian origin of the society."

After being one of the leading lights of the new Theosophical Society
during the first three months of its existence, Sotheran, in December
1875, had a public falling out with Madame Blavatsky and the society 
and it was his defection that prompted the transformation of the 
society into a secret one early in 1876. Its work was made secret, 
and an oath, signs, and words of recognition were instituted among 
the members. In the oath of the society the probationer promised 
to "maintain ABSOLUTE SECRECY respecting its proceedings, including 
its investigations and experiments."(In retrospect, Olcott said that 
he realized that the idea was simply a repetition of Cagliostro's 
efforts to found the Egyptian Lodge in the eighteenth century.)

In succeeding years,the membership was devided into three sections 
and a ritual structure and initiation were imposed, but the scheme 
was never entireiy worked out to anyone's satisfaction.(This work 
supposed to have gone on secretly as I have hinted at in my mails 
about drugs and the TS, see also "Chelaship and Lay Theosophists," 
The Theosophist 4, no 10,July 1883, Supplement: 10-11.)

As the degees were initially described in a circular issued in May 
1878 while Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott were still in New York,
persons joining the society became probationers in the third of the 
third section and then progressed through the degrees.
In the society's first circular to correspondents (issued in May 
1878), Blavatsky made the point explicitly:

"[Man]is the procreator of his species, physically, and having 
inherited the nature of the unknown but palpable Cause of his own 
creation, must possess in his
inner, psychical self, this creative power in lesser degree. He 
should,therefore, study to develop his latent powers, and inform 
himselfrespecting the laws of magnetism, electricity and all other 
forms of force,whether of the seen or unseen universes."

In commenting on this, Colonel Olcott made it clear that the degree 
andsection structure announced "was in the hope and expectation that 
weshould have more practical guidance in adjusting the several grades 
of members than we had had- or have since had, I may add." (Old 
Diary 
Leaves 1:399)

In September 1878, Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott issued another
circular to announoe the new "Theosophical Society of the Arya Samaj 
of
Aryavart," the result of the alliance with the Indian



Arya Samaj of Swami Dayananda. This also made it dear that the 
structuring
of the society into sections was to promote individual, practical 
occult
development. The circular provided that members "also, should they so
desire, labour to acquire that Control over certain forces of nature 
which
a knowledge of her mysteries imparts to its possessor." 

The "Principles, Rules, and By Laws" of the society, adopted in late
1879, make it clear that, as envisioned, the first section was the
inaccessible abode of the masters or brother-the inner cirle of the
unknown superiors, who guided the society-and that practical work 
still
continued to be a goal" ("unknown superiors" was of course aterm used 
in many other masonic and esoteric societys of that time and before, 
and not only the TS, meaning the 
idea of the later Mahatmas really originated with other secret 
societys long before the TS and was always already invented, see for 
example the Strict Observance and so on mentioned in one of my 
earlier 
mails including on my web page)

At the end of Isis Unveiled,Blavatsky wrote :

"By those who have followed US thus far, it will naturally be asked, 
to what
practical issue this book tends; much has been said about magic and 
its
potentiality, much of the immense antiquity of its practice. Do we 
wish
to affirm that the occult sciences ought to be studied and practiced
throughout the world? Would we replace modern spiritualism with the 
ancient
magic?"(Isis Unveiled, 1:634.)

Again for those who want theosophy to be a revealed teaching of some 
sort where everything had to come from one source, and explain (twist)
everything to have remained the same in both Isis and the SD plus 
later writings of Blavatsky, I don't think you will find something 
like the above quote in the neo-theosophy of Dallas for example.

For the few who were prepared to "pay the price of
discipline and selfconquest which their development exacts" the 
answer,was: 


"To become a neophyte, one must be ready to devote himseif heart and 
soul to the study of mystic Sciences. Magic-most imperative of 
mistresses-brooks no rival. Unlike other sciences, a theoretical 
knowledge of formulae without mental capacities or soul powers, is 
utterly useless in magic." 

The conclusion is inescapable that in the early days of Theosophy, 
mere bookish occuitism was thought useless. Practical "magic," 
although it was no easy mistress and required the instruction of 
adepts, was the goal and the only real path to personal, direct 
experience of the mysteries of the universe.

"To admit the possibility of anyone becoming a practical Cabalist (or 
a Rosicrucian, as we will call him, as the names seem to have become
synonymous) who simply has the firm determination to "become" one, and
hopes to get the secret knowledge through studying the Jewish Cabala, 
or every one that may come into existence, without actually being 
imtiated by another, and so being "made" such by someone who "knows," 
is as foolish as to hope to thread the famous labyrinth without the 
clue..... [W]hat hope can there be for a modern Occultist, learned 
only in theoretical knowledge, to ever attain his object? Occultism 
without practice will ever be like the statute of Pygmalion, and no 
one can animate it without infusing into it a spark of the sacred 
Divine Fire"(Blavatsky, ,,A Few Questions to ,HIRAF,'" BCW, 1:114.0
And with "Divine Fire" we again have a Randolphean term.

What then appears to have been at issue in the society as originally
envisioned-and in Madame Blavatsky's gathering of followers even 
before the commencement of the society-was not mere theoretical 
discussion among equals or merely the dissemination of bookish learn­
ing, but practical occult work and (it was hoped) what would later be 
called "chelaship"-initiation into practical occultism by the masters.
This practical side of the work of the society was secret from the 
beginning, and it was disagreement precisely over one aspect of this 
practical work-the public announcement of the experiments of G. H. 
Felt-that led to the defection of Charles Sotheran and the 
imposition of a formal oath of secrecy on the members of the 
society. 
Brigitte