The University of Sydney Copyright in relation to this thesis· Under the Copyright Act 1968 (several provision of which are referred to below), this thesis must be used only under the normal conditions of scholarly fair dealing for the purposes of research, criticism or review. In particular no results or conclusions should be extracted from it. nor should it be copied or closely paraphrased in whole or in part without the written consent of the author. Proper written acknowledgement should be made for any assistance obtained from this thesis. Under Section 35(2) of the Copyright Act 1968 'the author of a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work is the owner of any copyright subsisting in the work'. By virtue of Section 32( I) copyright 'subsists in an original literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work that is unpublished' and of which the author was an Australian citizen, an Australian protected person or a person reSident in Australia. The Act. by Section 36( I) provides: 'Subject to this Act. the copyright in a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work is mfringed by a person who, not being the owner of the copyright and without the licence of the owner of the copyright, does in Australia. or authorises the doing in Australia of, any act comprised in the copyright'. Section 31 (I )(a)(i) provides that copyright includes the exclusive right to 'reproduce the work in a material form'.Thus, copyright IS mfringed by a person who, not being the owner of the copyright. reproduces or authorises the reproduction of a work. or of more than a reasonable part of the work. in a material form, unless the reproduction is a 'fair dealing' with the work. 'for the purpose of research or study' as further defined in Sections 40 and 41 of the Act. Section 5 I (2) provides that 'Where a manuscript, or a copy, of a thesis or other similar literary work that has not been published is kept in a library of a university or other similar inStitution or in an archives, the copyright in the thesis or other work is not infringed by the making of a copy of the thesis or other work by or on behalf of the officer in charge of the library or archives if the copy Is supplied to a person who satisfies an authorized officer of the library or archives that he requires the copy for the purpose of research or study'. *'Thesis' includes 'treatise', dissertation' and other similar productions. THE THEOSOPHICAL MASTERS: An Investigation int0 the Conceptual Domains of H. P. Blavatsky and C. W. Leadbeater BRENDANJAMESFRENCH Volume Two A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Religion Studies University of Sydney August 2000 © Brendan French, August 2000 ADO'lOdAl. S~tll.SVW V "MDOtI.LWd Introduction The present research has been premised upon an ideology of objecti vity, in so far as all claims made in behalf of the Masters' ontology have been considered from a perspective of scholarly agnosticism. Such a methodological standpoint, rather than delimiting the research possibilities, is actually the most viable means of approaching the data without causing intentional or accidental bias to upset the selection and examination of materials, or damage to any heuristic outcomes. This last point is of great significance. In a nascent discipline, poor methodological apparatus (or good apparatus, poorly-applied) can easily taint a particular domain, and litter the field with obstacles for future scholars to have to confront. An empirical methodology also fosters collaborative problem-solving. Unlike the common epistemological and semantic divide which characterises religionist­ reductionist discourse, empiricism qua empiricism can only ever be tentative and incremental. The fact that empiricism encourages hypothesis and provisional postulation, rather than the discernment (or imposition) of absolutes, means that a particular heuristic can be tested and retested by a community of scholars whose axiomatically-held opinions have been suppressed as far as possible. To this degree, a theoretical construct, abstracted from the data, can never assume anything but a provisional status; the valency of a particular theory can only be measured by scholarly consensus and, in certain cases, broad applicability. What little attention Theosophy has garnered within the academy has tended in the main to be sociological and psychological. Sparse focus has been directed toward the ideational constructs of Theosophy. As a consequence, whatever interest the Masters have generated has tended to concentrate upon facticity and notions of religious credulity. With one notable exception, the entire literature appears to be blatantly or subtly polemical, with the physical existence of the Masters considered to be the 399 fundamental, or even sole, question.' Given the methodological position espoused by the present work, such a question simply cannot be asked, and certainly never answered. Yet, even if sufficient metaphysical apparatus were somehow made available, the question would still remain of only peripheral concern - for the simple reason that, for the period under scrutiny, it is phenomenologically self-evident that the Masters were deemed to exist. Even in the face of harsh opposition, tens of thousands of people in the years from 1875 have believed that the Masters were overseeing the Theosophical Society and the actions of its members. For all of its necessary limitations, empirical methodology does not disallow diachronic analysis, nor any interpretive or hypothetical framework that might result. Consequently, the foregoing study of the Masters gestalt has led the present author to certain provisional hypotheses which might have some applicability for future research into Theosophy and related domains. It is hoped that such hypotheses, by avoiding the barrenness engendered by concentration on the physical existence of the Masters, can assist in the project of establishing a locus for Theosophy within the historical, socio-cultural, and epistemological paradigms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Further, the academic study of esotericism(s), being only in its infancy as a discrete discipline, has understandably tended to concentrate on data from the distant past in order to map the esoteric terrain and to discern such staples of academic discourse as appropriate nomenclature, causal influence, and heuristic definitions. As a consequence some imbalance has entered the field, with the result that more modern formulations have sometimes tended to be considered ersatz or unimaginatively derivative. It is hoped that the following discussions might assist in placing Theosophy more firmly within the living tide of esotericism such that its sui generis character and significant contribution to the history of ideas might be more fully appreciated. , Paul 10hnson's research into the possible modelling of Blavatsky's Masters upon men within her acquaintance is the only substantive work in the field which avoids obvious religionism or reductionism: see 10hnson, The Masters Revealed. Nevertheless, because 10hnson is dealing solely with the human identities of the Masters, and not the meta-empirical claims made in their behalf, his valuable research avails little for those who wish to understand the Masters qua Masters. 400 Although the Masters qua Masters are presented as being highly mercurial, with shifting characteristics and morphology, there is nevertheless sufficient consistency in the accounts to suggest the appropriateness of positing Masters-typologies. Such typologies do not seek to isolate the characteristics or attributes of particular Masters, but rather to view the Masters generically, and to concentrate upon their functions within the Theosophical meta-discourse. (Those functions which can be deemed to possess a predominantly sociological or psychological foundation have not been examined, as they fall outside of the methodological parameters of the present research). -. 401 It should be noted that the following discussions are highly provisory and that the typologies are by no means exhaustive. 2 In all instances the hypotheses are intended primarily to illuminate avenues for further investigation. As a consequence, surveys of particular trends and philosophies have been kept necessarily brief, and referencing has been, for the main, maintained at a minimum. It might not be inappropriate to suggest that each of the following typological categories warrants significant individual scholarly analysis; certainly, such treatment lies beyond the purview of the present 2 There are numerous avenues for future research which the present work simply cannot encompass. Among the more obvious candidates for Masters-typologies can be found the following: I) The influence of the Romantics, particularly the American Transcendentalists, on Blavatskian formulations. Schematically surprisingly akin to occultism (cf. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, 'Romanticism and the Esoteric Connection', in van den Broek & Hanegraaff, eds, Gnosis and Hermeticism, 237- 268), the Romantics combined a heightened temporalism. an Orientalising fervour, an acceptance of progressivist teleologies. and a fascination with various traditional esotericisms - often to rather baroque ends. In this context, it would be particularly worthwhile to examine Emerson's notion of 'representative men' in relation to the Theosophical Masters. For Transcendentalism see Arthur Versluis. American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions, Oxford University Press, New York,