THE THIRD GENERATION of THEOSOPHY and BEYOND1 W. Michael Ashcraft Introduction According to Catherine Wessinger
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THE THIRD GENERATION OF THEOSOPHY AND BEYOND1 W. Michael Ashcraft Introduction According to Catherine Wessinger (this volume), the original Theosophical Society was led by Annie Besant (1847–1933), assisted both formally and informally by Charles W. Leadbeater (1854–1934), after the death of one of the co-founders of the Society, Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907). This soci- ety had international headquarters at Adyar in Southern India (hereafter TS Adyar). Wessinger also notes that in 1895 a Theosophical group split off from TS Adyar, led by first-generation leader William Q. Judge (1851–1896). He was succeeded by Katherine Tingley (1847–1929), who moved the headquarters of this society from New York City to Point Loma, near San Diego, California, and later the headquarters were relocated to Pasadena in the Los Angeles metropolitan area (hereafter TS Pasadena).2 A third Theosophical organization formed after Robert Crosbie (1849–1919), a fol- lower of Tingley, split from her organization and formed the United Lodge of Theosophists in 1909 in Los Angeles (hereafter ULT). These three orga- nizations – TS Adyar, TS Pasadena, and ULT – were not the only Theosophical groups of the twentieth century, but they are the most important.3 They had the largest number of members, produced the most literature, spread the farthest around the world, generated the most income, built the most buildings, and influenced the most number of non-Theosophists especially through their production and dissemination of numerous books and periodicals. 1 This chapter focuses upon white English-speaking Theosophists, especially in the United States. Little attention is given to Theosophists elsewhere in the world, but this does not imply that they were unimportant. Rather, I chose this focus because of space limitations, my own specialization in American religious history, and the primary sources available to me. 2 For the sake of consistency, I will refer to this tradition as TS Pasadena throughout this chapter. However, it was not referred to as ‘Pasadena’ until the 1950s. In the decades before that it was associated with Point Loma, and later Covina, California, where headquarters were relocated in 1942. 3 Among the most important Theosophical organizations not included here were two other groups that, like Crosbie and the ULT, left Tingley’s TS, both in 1898: the Temple of the People, started by William H. Dower and Francia A. LaDue in Syracuse, New York, and 74 w. michael ashcraft Besant, Leadbeater, Tingley, and Crosbie were second-generation leaders. Most scholarship in Theosophical history concentrates on the for- mative years of the Theosophical movement, when the first- and second- generation leaders were alive (see Godwin and Wessinger, this volume). By comparison, much less scholarly writing focuses on the movement after the first- and second-generation leadership passed from the scene. Besant died in 1933, Leadbeater in 1934, Tingley in 1929, and Crosbie in 1919. Because their death dates fall near or within the 1930s, this chapter uses that decade to mark the beginning of a third generation in the Theosophical movement, and will highlight key events and trends from that decade until the present. It is hoped that this essay will fill a gap in the historical scholarship on the Theosophical movement and motivate others to conduct research and write about the movement from the 1930s to the present. Conflict and Cooperation Some general observations about the three main societies in the 1930s are in order. TS Adyar was, and has remained, the Theosophical organization with the largest worldwide membership. In 1930 they recorded 39,311 members, a loss of over 4,300 from the previous year due to the financial suffering of the Great Depression and from fallout over Jiddu Krish- namurti’s (1895–1986) rejection of his role as World Teacher (Stokes 1930b).4 Throughout the 1930s, TS Adyar steadily lost members. By 1940 they reported slightly less than 28,000.5 TS Pasadena and ULT did not make their membership data public, but all indications suggest that their numerical size was far smaller than that of TS Adyar. That remains true today. The three organizations also fostered different leadership cultures. TS Adyar supported the occult experiments of Besant and Leadbeater Ernest T. Hargrove’s Theosophical Society, headquartered in New York City. These groups differ from the Theosophical offshoots discussed in this volume. Unlike the offshoots, which developed significant variations on the basic teachings formulated by the first gen- eration of Theosophical leaders, these two groups (and the ULT), were devoted to trans- mitting the teachings of the first-generation leaders Helena P. Blavatsky (1831–1891) and William Q. Judge. 4 Henry Newlin Stokes (1859–1942) was a TS Adyar member who published the O.E. Library Critic from 1911 until his death. He expressed independent views on Theosophical matters more forcefully than any other Theosophical writer of the time. See Santucci 1986: 129–139. 5 These figures are in the Annual General Reports published by TS Adyar..