Plato and the Theatre of the Occult Revival: Edouard Schuré, Katherine Tingley, and Rudolph Steiner

RELIGION and the ARTS Religion and the Arts 14 (2010) 367–385 brill.nl/rart

Edmund M. Lingan University of Toledo

Abstract This article illuminates a modern shift in the relationship between theatre and religion that became apparent during the Occult Revival that thrived in Europe and the United States between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It does this by exploring how Edouard Schuré, Katherine Tingley, and Rudolf Steiner combined theatre with an early- modern legend concerning Plato’s involvement in a primordial religion to the end of constructing and disseminating new esoteric religions and spiritual systems. Unlike previous artists who drew inspiration from religion as they created new works of art, Schuré, Tingley, and Steiner used theatre and esoteric lore to consciously construct religious and spiritual worldviews. The work of Schuré, Tingley, and Steiner shows that the relationship between theatre and modern occultism contributed to the proliferation of new modes of faith during the Occult Revival, and it also suggests that the types of interactions that were established between theatre and religion at that time continue to occur in the present.

Keywords religion and theatre, theatre and the occult, the occult, Occult Revival, occult theatre, Rudolph Steiner, Katherine Tingley, Edouard Schuré, Anthroposophy, Theosophy, symbol- ist theatre, symbolism

etween the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries in Europe Band the United States there appeared a group of occultists who combined theatre with an early-modern legend concerning Plato’s involvement in a primordial religion to the end of constructing and disseminating new esoteric religions and spiritual systems.1 In his 1889 book, The Great

1) With the term “primordial religion,” I am referring to pseudo-historical claims made by the occultists who are discussed in this book regarding a pre-historic religion that is the universal basis of all the religions that have existed between the dawn of humanity and the

Initiates: A Study of the Secret History of Religions, for instance, the promi- nent French Theosophist Edouard Schuré proposed that Plato had been empowered with supersensible perception by a drama that he saw per- formed as part of his initiation into the mystery religion that was practiced in ancient Eleusis. Schuré also claimed that, if properly reconstructed, this ancient and spiritually-eﬃcacious theatre could be revived in the present. In the United States, Katherine Tingley, who led the Universal Brother- hood and Theosophical Society from the grounds of a large settlement in California, produced and directed original Theosophical plays in which Plato appeared as a character and endorsed her teachings concerning altru- ism and reincarnation. Like Schuré, Tingley believed that her Theosophi- cal teachings harmonized with an ancient mystery religion of which Plato had been an initiate, and she established an organization called the School for the Revival of the Lost Mysteries of Antiquity with the intention of reviving Plato’s religion in her own era. Rudolf Steiner, who left the Theo- sophical Society to found the Anthroposophical Society in 1913, wrote four “Mysteriendramen” that contained depictions of spiritual realms and beings that he claimed to be spiritual realities. Steiner’s understanding of these beings and realms was rooted in his interpretation of Plato’s philo- sophical writings as occult texts containing insight into the supernatural. The view taken of Plato in the theatre of Schuré, Steiner, and Tingley is indicative of a lively relationship that was established between theatre and new religion during the Occult Revival, which thrived in Europe and the US between the late nineteenth and mid twentieth centuries.2 During the present. There is no solid historical basis for these claims. InThe Heirs of Plato: A Study of the Old Academy (347–274 BC), historian John Dillon acknowledges that Plato and his protégés did have a “certain degree of interest” in the Zoroastrian tradition, but he does not claim that a primordial religion ever existed (198–99). In the introduction to his 1973 book, The Origins of Greek Religion, B. C. Dietrich suggests that the pantheism of ancient Greece was based to an extent upon older, Eastern religions, but he does not authenticate the idea of a primordial religion. Regardless of this lack of historical proof, the concept of a primordial religion was very popular among occultists during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 2) Several new spiritual movements appeared during the Occult Revival, such as modern Theosophy, Anthroposophy, modern Hermeticism, Spiritualism, and various schools of ceremonial magic. To read more about the Occult Revival and the movements associated with it see Ronald Hutton, Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft; Wouter J. Hanegraaﬀ, Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism; Maria Carlson, “No Religion Higher Than Truth”: A History of the Theosophical Movement in Russia, 1875– 1922.