This weekend, in preparing for my presentation at the AAR, I have been perusing my facsimile prints of The Spiritual Scientist. This newspaper began its life in September 1874 and was published and edited by E. Gerry Brown. It ended publication in July 1878. PDF copies of the newspaper can be found here. The reason I am reviewing it is that prior to the emergence of the Theosophical Society in 1875 and during the Society’s early years, Blavatsky and Olcott were prolific contributors and significantly changed its direction of the newspaper from Spiritualism to Occultism. As a result, its pages contain some of the earliest writings regarding Blavatsky’s ideas about occultism and her efforts to separate occultism from Spiritualism.
While looking through the pages, I could not help notice the numerous instances Bulwer-Lytton’s novel, Zanoni (1842), was mentioned, or had extracts published. For instance, in the June 17, 1875 issue, on the third page in a section entitled “Personal” we read:
Bulwer’s novel “Zanoni,” which is one of the most fascinating he ever wrote, embodies a great deal of information concerning the claims of the occultists which should be read by every intelligent Spiritualist. It is asserted Zanoni and Mejnour are merely pseudonyms for personages who have actually existed and that magical powers were exercised by them quite as remarkable as those attributed to the characters in the book.
The December 9 issue of the same year has extracts as do other issues of the newspaper. The fiction of Bulwer-Lytton was very influential on Blavatsky and Olcott and the emergence of the “Masters” or “Mahatmas” Koot Hoomi and Morya later seems to be modeled on Zanoni and Mejnour. Other Bulwer-Lytton works that influenced Blavatsky and Theosophy include The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), “Zicci: A Tale” (1838), A Strange Story (1862), and The Coming Race (1871), also known as Vril: The Coming Race. We see reference to these works repeatedly throughout Theosophical literature, as well as assertions that Bulwer-Lytton was a practicing occultist. In Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky mentions Vril repeatedly and claims that it is a cosmic force and power that occultists wield and that Bulwer-Lytton was able to control. Of course the fact that Bulwer-Lytton was not an occultist was not important. For instance, in a letter Bulwer-Lytton claims the Vril of his “Coming Race” was based on his imagination of what electricity could be used for in the future.
Bulwer-Lytton died in 1873, yet we still see Theosophical claims that Bulwer-Lytton was an occultist well into the 20th century. There was even a book published by the Theosophical Society in 1927 entitled, Bulwer Lytton as Occultist. Written by C. Nelson Stewart, his volume claims, “If one were asked to name the book which more than any other provided a matrix for the building-up of modern theosophical philosophy, Zanoni seems the inevitable choice.” Yet one really must look too many of Bulwer-Lytton’s works, because they influenced Theosophy in myriad ways. Yet proving their influence is difficult. Moreover, to what end? What do we learn from pointing out the influences?
In his recent review of Brill’s Handbook of Contemporary Paganism, Markus Altena Davidsen writes that the volume lacked acknowledgement of the ways fiction and other media, such as movies and television shows, have greatly influenced modern paganism. This lack of engagement, however, is also present in the study of victorian occultism. While it may be easier to point to the way Heinlein’s A Stranger in a Strange Land was influential on the pagan Church of All Worlds, it is harder to pin-point direct influences in the doctrines of Theosophy because Blavatsky and others both intentionally obfuscated influences, and also invented ideas about the works and person of Bulwer-Lytton. So how are we, as scholars, to address these issues? When Blavatsky writes,
If the question is asked why Mr. Keely was not allowed to pass a certain limit, the answer is easy; because that which he has unconsciously discovered, is the terrible sidereal Force, known to, and named by the Atlanteans MASH-MAK, and by the Aryan Rishis in their Ashtar Vidya by a name that we do not like to give. It is the vril of Bulwer Lytton’s “Coming Race,” and of the coming races of our mankind. The name vril may be a fiction; the Force itself is a fact doubted as little in India as the existence itself of their Rishis, since it is mentioned in all the secret works.
Do we simply claim she was myth-making based on Bulwer-Lytton’s fiction? Okay, maybe that is true. But so what? Blavatsky’s assertion informs Theosophical Doctrine and many Theosophists take these statements as fact. Stewart claims that Zicci and A Strange Story “were based rather upon what we should now call ‘astral experiences’ beginning in [Bulwer-Lytton’s] early youth.” In all these Theosophical assertions, fiction acts to reveal and conceal what Theosophists see as occult truth. Those who have the eyes to see and can read between the lines see in Bulwer-Lytton’s fiction the truth of occultism and the works become manuals. Terms such as “The Dweller on the Threshold” enter occultism and become topics of Theosophical doctrine. Fiction becomes the seeds that sprout into assertions about occult truth. So what?
To date the only sustained scholarship about the influence of Bulwer-Lytton on Theosophy is S.B. Liljegren’s Bulwer Lytton’s Novels and Isis Unveiled (1957). Robert Lee Wolff also makes a few references to Theosophy in a chapter in his Strange Stories: Explorations in Victorian Fiction—The Occult and the Neurotic (1971). Yet, both of these works are very old and the topic could benefit greatly from more recent scholarship in both Victorian occultism and English literature. But despite these two instances, there is still something in me that thinks there is more to be said that simply pointing to Bulwer-Lytton’s influences. I keep asking, “So what?” Writing that Blavatsky’s masters were fiction is not new, the Hodgson report was claiming that over a century ago. So does it matter that Bulwer-Lytton’s Zanoni and Mejnour were her models for masters? I am not interested in participating in claims of legitimacy, an issue that is probably at play in the essay on paganism Davidsen reviewed. So how does the mentioning of the fictional origins of Theosophical doctrine advance scholarship? At this point, I’m not sure. I keep asking, “so what?” I am sure fiction played a role in Theosophical doctrine. Now what? This is now something I am still considering.
The Strange Theosophical Connection to the U.S. Civil Rights Movement
John L. Crow
[This blog post was also posted on the Religion in American History blog on January 30, 2013.]
Last week most of the nation celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. It was also the day of President Barack Obama’s second inauguration, and for many, an opportunity for community service. In reflecting on the historical events that led to this day, King’s involvement in the civil rights struggle, and the changes it brought forth, I also began thinking about the strange connection Theosophy had in helping the cause of civil rights, both in the United States and in India. Now it may strike one as odd to assert Theosophy has a connection with civil rights, but in fact, the Theosophical Society had an important role in setting civil rights in motion in India, and the American civil rights movement through the person of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi .
Gandhi grew up relatively secular. It was while attending college in England that he encountered two Theosophists who asked him if he had read the Bhagavad Gita. Sheepishly, he replied no. They invited him to read a copy, as it held a central place within Theosophy. Gandhi did begin to read the Gita, and he attended Theosophical classes. In a biographical essay about Gandhi in The New Yorker, Indian writer, Ved Mehta, relates, “It was actually thanks to his Theosophist friends that Gandhi started learning about his own religion, by reading the Bhagavad Gita, which he was ashamed of never having read, either in the original Sanskrit or in a Gujarati translation, and which he now tackled eagerly in Sir Edwin Arnold’s popular English translation. In time the Bhagavad Gita became the most important book in his life.” At one point Gandhi met with Madame Blavatsky and Annie Besant and they discussed Theosophical doctrine and Hinduism. Gandhi also read Theosophical literature such as The Key to Theosophy, and maintained a constant contact with the Theosophical Society and Besant while in South Africa. Thus it was through Theosophy that Gandhi discovered Hinduism, and in particular, the Gita, a text he found so central to his life.
However, this is not all. A number of European and Indian Theosophists helped found the Indian National Congress (INC) in 1885 and held a strong connection with the Indian national rights movement. Annie Besant, second President of the Theosophical Society, serving from 1907 to 1931, was also elected president of the Indian National Congress in 1917. Moreover, in 1914, Besant and other Theosophists helped found the All India Home Rule League, an organization that lobbied the British government to allow India to rule itself. Isaac Lubelsky documents these interactions and much more in his recent Celestial India: Madame Blavatsky and the Birth of Indian Nationalism (Equinox Pub., 2012). Lubelsky also points out, however, that there eventually arose a tension between well-meaning Europeans seeing India through an Orientalist lens and Indians who strove for leadership of their own nationalism movements and to include all Indians, not just the Brahman elite the Theosophists promoted. Eventually Gandhi was elected president of the INC and he severed the connections between the INC and the Theosophical Society. By 1919, the relationship between Gandhi and Besant had soured and the Theosophical leadership ceased having a role in the INC.
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s admiration and emulation of Gandhi is well known. MLK’s assertion of peaceful resistance was modeled on Gandhi’s effort to gain independence for India, an effort that was realized in 1947. MLK, to the best of my knowledge, did not read Theosophical materials. Yet, had Gandhi not engaged in Theosophy in his college years, discovering the Gita, and had Theosophy not initiated the organizations that later led Indians to realize their independence, there might not have been a non-violent resistance model for the U.S. Civil Rights advocates to emulate.