Divine Feminine: Theosophy and Feminism in England

divine feminine This page intentionally left blank The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science 119th series (2001) 1. Joy Dixon Divine Feminine: Theosophy and Feminism in England JOY DIXON DIVINE FEMININE Theosophy and Feminism in England The Johns Hopkins University Press baltimore and london ᭧ 2001 The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 2001 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 246897531 The Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dixon, Joy, 1962– Divine feminine : theosophy and feminism in England / Joy Dixon. p. cm. — (The Johns Hopkins University studies in historical and political science 119th ser.) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8018-6499-2 (alk. paper) 1. Theosophical Society (Great Britain)—History. 2. Feminism—Religious aspects—Theosophical Society (Great Britain)—History of doctrines. 3. Feminism— England—History. I. Title. II. Series. BP573.F46 D59 2001 299Ј.934Ј0820941—dc21 00-009881 A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Frontispiece: Lectures at the Leeds Lodge, Theosophical Society (Adyar Library and Research Centre) Contents List of Illustrations ix Preface xi Acknowledgments xvii Introduction 1 part one domesticating the occult 1. The Undomesticated Occult 17 2. The Mahatmas in Clubland: Manliness and Scientific Spirituality 41 3. “A Deficiency of the Male Element”: Gendering Spiritual Experience 67 4. “Buggery and Humbuggery”: Sex, Magic, and Occult Authority 94 part two political alchemies 5. Occult Body Politics 121 6. The Divine Hermaphrodite and the Female Messiah: Feminism and Spirituality in the 1890s 152 7. A New Age for Women: Suffrage and the Sacred 177 8. Ancient Wisdom, Modern Motherhood 206 Conclusion 227 Notes 235 Works Cited 265 Index 285 This page intentionally left blank Illustrations Lectures at the Leeds Lodge, TS frontispiece The groundbreaking ceremony at the TS London Headquarters in 1911 2 Artist’s sketch of the proposed TS Headquarters 9 H. P. Blavatsky 22 Annie Besant 58 Jiddu Krishnamurti 78 English Co-Masons 81 C. W. Leadbeater 97 “The Streams of Vitality,” from The Chakras, by C. W. Leadbeater 128 Septimus E. Scott, “The Dawn,” Bibby’s Annual, 1917 178 George Arundale and Rukmini Devi 221 This page intentionally left blank Preface This project had its beginnings in a paper I wrote many years ago as a postgraduate at the University of Sussex. I was working on a study of representations of the women’s suffrage movement in the popular press, tracking down caricatures of the “shrieking sisterhood” in magazines like Punch and in comic novels. Much of what I found was predictable: the suffragette (according to the comic novelists at least) was a woman of a certain age, sexually frustrated, resolutely unfashionable, and pos- sibly hysterical. But there were other, more surprising elements in the picture: the typical suffragette was also (again according to the comic novelists) a vegetarian, an animal rights activist, and a devotee of the Higher Thought, Cosmic Consciousness, or the Masters of the Wis- dom. Turning to the classified advertisements in suffrage newspapers, I discovered a feminist culture that had been largely ignored by histori- ans. Central to that culture was a self-conscious attempt to create a feminist spirituality. There were advertisements for women’s spiritualist seances, lectures on the Divine Feminine, and prayer circles that met to offer intercessory prayer on behalf of women imprisoned for suffrage militancy. In the midst of all of this activity, one organization occupied a prominent place: the Theosophical Society, which had its headquarters in India and had been founded by one woman (Helena Petrovna Blavatsky) and led by another (Annie Besant). Since that discovery, I have been preoccupied with the effort to un- derstand the place of spirituality in general, and theosophy in particu- lar, in the English feminist movement. This book is the result of that preoccupation. Part I, “Domesticating the Occult,” traces the process by which both eastern mysticism and women’s spirituality were created and consoli- dated, focusing on the ways in which gendered understandings of eastern spirituality were shaped by the contingencies of the historical moments in which they emerged. On the most obvious level, to domesticate is to tame, and there were many efforts to tame the power of the occult, to assimilate it into existing religious and scientific systems, or xi xii preface to force it to accommodate itself to class and social hierarchies. At the same time, “eastern” occultism was an exotic import—a product of colonial trade which arrived in England along with cashmere shawls and Benares ware. But to domesticate occultism was also to locate it in the home, to make it the peculiar province of women and a “feminine” spirituality. The process of domestication was erratic. Chapter 1, “The Undo- mesticated Occult,” lays out the challenge that H. P. Blavatsky and her mysterious trans-Himalayan Mahatmas posed to those who wished to assimilate this new eastern wisdom into European culture, and especially into the rational and masculine language of late Victorian science. It also explores the contradictions inherent in the founding of the Theosophical Society, which were never fully resolved. These contradictions were reflected in the differences between the two founders: Henry Steel Olcott, the organizer and practical man of business who envi- sioned the society as a kind of religious and philosophical debating club, versus Blavatsky, the mystic, occultist, and seer who emphasized the society’s function as a school of occult development and who bol- stered her claims with impressive displays of “phenomena.” The differences between Blavatsky and Olcott were reflected in the society’s peculiar sense of its own mission: to proclaim publicly occult or esoteric truths, truths that by definition are secret, hidden, and known only to the initiated. After this early phase (which ended in 1885, when the Society for Psychical Research published a damning report on Blavatsky and her followers), members of the Theosophical Society turned to new strate- gies. Chapter 2, “The Mahatmas in Clubland: Manliness and Scientific Spirituality,” explores another effort to domesticate the occult, this time by distancing the society from scandal and sensation. During this period the Theosophical Society in England was dominated by upper- or upper- middle-class men; it was an eminently “clubable” creed. The Theosoph- ical Society in the 1880s and 1890s was a quasi-public/quasi-private organization in the tradition of more mainstream late Victorian voluntary associations. As such, it was dominated and controlled by respectable gentlemen who stamped their impress on the society and its teaching. These men emphasized theosophy’s scientific claims and its celebration of the “manly” virtues of rationality and independent judgment. There were various efforts to maintain this version of theosophy, as part of a public culture of rational discussion implicitly and explicitly defined as masculine, in the face of challenges from those who saw theosophy as a feminine form of spirituality. This is the central theme of preface xiii Chapter 3, “‘A Deficiency of the Male Element’: Gendering Spiritual Experience.” With Annie Besant’s conversion to theosophy in 1889 the Theosophical Society gained a new public prominence. Over time, and particularly after Besant’s election as president in 1907, the character of the organization changed dramatically. Besant reanimated its Esoteric Section and demanded greater commitment and energy from members. Besant’s “neo-theosophy” was criticized both as feminine and as a sub- mission to “Oriental despotism,” and many of the respectable gentlemen who had formed the core constituency a generation earlier aban- doned the society during this period. In the end, the conflicting factions reached a modus vivendi on the basis of a sexual division of spiritual labor that distinguished between feminine modes of mystical experience and a more virile, magico- clerical occult tradition. But because the vision of gender relations on which these divisions were based was itself internally divided, the version of feminine spirituality that emerged was a contradictory one. The supposedly virile tradition of occultism also contained contradictions, and was in fact often stigmatized as effeminate. In the scandal that came to be known as the Leadbeater Case, the Theosophical Society’s leading occultist was accused of the sexual abuse of young boys in his charge. The occult tradition thus became entangled in explosive de- bates about sexuality—and especially male homosexuality. This is the subject of Chapter 4, “‘Buggery and Humbuggery’: Sex, Magic, and Occult Authority.” Part II, “Political Alchemies,” explores the role of these new visions of spirituality in feminist political culture in England. Like the utopian socialists a century earlier, many theosophists emphasized that political change needed to be accompanied by moral and ethical transformation. Just as the alchemists had attempted to turn lead into gold, theosophists attempted to spiritualize politics. Chapter 5, “Occult Body Poli- tics,” focuses on esoteric understandings of the body and their political implications. Theosophists—and particularly women within the Theo- sophical

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