journal of religion in europe 8 (2015) 475-488 Journal of Religion in Europe brill.com/jre
Book Reviews ∵
Olav Hammer and Mikael Rothstein (eds.) Handbook of the Theosophical Current (Brill Handbooks on Contemporary Religion 7), (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2013) v + 494 pp., isbn: 978-90-04-23596-0 / e-book isbn: 978-90-04-23597-7, €171
Locations of Theosophy
To many readers and scholars, Theosophy remains an elusive movement, better known for the eccentric personalities at its helm than for its philosophical thought or historical impact. Indeed, an enduring feature of critical studies is to focus on the individuals who were both attracted to and alienated by Theosophy, including such prominent rebels as Rudolf Steiner, J. Krishnamurthi, and Anna Kingsford, who all began as Theosophists but eventually broke away and created offshoots that bore their personal imprint. This volume is no exception to the personality-driven narrative. While offering an eclectic fare ranging from intel- lectual history to science fiction studies, the Handbook consists mostly of articles that explore the individuals at Theosophy’s helm, from its founding members Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott (Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke) to its second- and third-generation leaders around the world. This approach has value, even if it hews closely to the familiar narrative of Theosophy as biographi- cal history. A fine example of the intellectual pay-off in biographical labor is Tim Rudbøg’s essay, which describes the convulsive history of the Theosophical Society (ts) in America through a study of its founder Katherine Tingley, whose determined manipulations of other individuals and institutions reveal just how persistently charismatic authority shaped Theosophical history. Indeed, as Catherine Wessinger’s essay allows us to see, the focus on personalities reinforces Max Weber’s seminal ideas about institutions as products of the ‘routinization of charisma’, whereby Weber illuminatingly tracks the shifts from chiliastic proph- ecy to institutional authority in modernity. That Weber runs as a thread through numerous articles in this collection attests to the efficacy of his concepts about institution making as a key factor in the rise of alternative spiritual movements.
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At the same time, while various branches of the ts sprang up around the world, Theosophy’s increased visibility as an institution created reactions against the growing authoritarianism and centralization of power in self-appointed lead- ers. As the ts became a rigid, authoritarian, and personality-driven hierarchy, there were individuals, like Alice Leighton Cleather, who rejected the corrosion of the ts’s founding precepts and called for a return to Blavatsky’s antinomian principles.1 Cleather’s critique of the ts’s authoritarianism evokes the spirit of Blavatsky’s antagonism to orthodox Christianity, in that both critiques aimed to recover the esoteric core of thought appropriated by scriptural dogma and authoritarian institutions. The strong imprint of various leaders is perhaps most evident in the different philosophical directions taken by the ts in the years after the Second World War. As the Handbook editors point out, while the ts retained the occultist emphases of its founding members in some of its geographical branches, other branches reflected the social and political currents of the time: a few took a utopian turn, while others manifested the symptoms of “Cold War paranoia and political apocalypse” (“Introduction,” p. 7). What becomes clear is that, no mat- ter how powerful the personalities of the ts leadership, even these individuals ultimately deferred to the prevailing cultural and political climate, “inspiring visions of a future that were alternately utopian and apocalyptic” (p. 7). The compulsions of world politics, in other words, trumped the controlling aims of whoever was in power at the ts, forcing the leadership to adjust to the prevail- ing zeitgeist. Interestingly, even as Theosophical thought was adapted to contemporary currents, it never lost its grounding in the foundational imagery of Atlantis and Lemuria. These two sunken islands, immortalized in literature from the time of Plato, evoked the dynamic pull between advancement and apocalypse that preoccupied Theosophists of all generations (Shannon Trosper Schorey; Garry W. Trompf). Indeed, Atlantis and Lemuria provided the symbolic repertoire for articulating a complex mix of hope and anxiety, in which the yearning to regain the glories of past civilizations coexisted with fears of impending catastrophe. The aura of a hallowed past simultaneously evoked the impossibly high levels of achievement preceding our own age, as well as the apocalyptic fate of advanced civilizations doomed to catastrophe. The symbolic economy of Atlantis and Lemuria conveyed the truncation of a civilization’s achievements, underscoring the tumultous narratives of progress and decay that ran through the sedimented layers of Theosophical thought.
1 Alice Leighton Cleather, H.P. Blavatsky: A Great Betrayal (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co., 1922). A Public Domain book.
journal of religion in europe 8 (2015) 475-488