Theos-Talk Archives (January 2002 Message tt00453)

To get a different view point here some interresting remarks by  
Dr.Brendan French (who wrote a not yet published book about the 
literrary ideas behind the Theosophical Masters) on theos-talk not 
to long ago but that most people on the list now seem to not be aware 
of. Would be interresting to see some comments on the individual 
points made here. 

Brendan French: "It seems to me that much of the contemporary 
discourse on occultism (and, it seems, particularly Theosophy) can
only be described as alarmingly unfocussed and, frankly, uninformed 
and tedious. I am afraid that most modern Theosophists are their own 
worst enemy as far as disendowing occultism of its absurdist 
elements. Theosophy began as a scholarly collective, and was 
expressly intended to satisfy an intellectual spiritual hunger one 
that avoided the barrenness of ossified dogmatism and blind faith. 
This is not to say that all Theosophists are ipso facto academics  
far from it but one might hope that Theosophists would welcome a
sympathetic scholarly hearing. In any event, I would like to think 
that a site of this kind could accommodate scholarly analysis as 
easily as general commentary and, letıs face it, more than occasional 
drivel.

Blavatsky was simply playing Hermesian games by exploring the 
transformative potential of mythic facts and factual myths. For in 
order to attract the attentions of a physical Master, the aspiring 
chela needed to be prepared by achieving a comprehensive knowledge
of Theosophy via the Theosophical canon (Isis Unveiled, the Mahatma 
letters, and The Secret Doctrine). Yet in a classical artifice, such 
preparation itself enacted a form of initiatory transformation which 
would obviate the necessity for a Master. Thus it was that fact bred 
mythology and mythology bred fact.

Although it might be noted that on several occasions Blavatsky and 
the Masters did indeed encourage aspiring chelas to study the canon 
as a prelude to chelaship (viz. The Mahatma Letters [1993 
Chronological edition], ed. Hao Chin, Letter No. 60, p.156), my
point is somewhat more to do with the dynamics of Theosophical 
instruction.

There is a classical genre of what might be called initiatory tracts, 
dating mostly from the first few centuries of the common era. Notable 
among these are such third-century texts as Porphyry's On the Life of 
Plotinus and the Order of His Books, Gregory Thaumaturgos 
Thanksgiving Speech, the Nag Hammadi Hermetic tractate Discourse on 
the Eighth and Ninth [or Ogdoad and Ennead],and the Nag Hammadi 
Gnostic tractate Allogenesı. At the risk of appearing turgid I might 
note that I believe the initiatory transformations which these texts 
engendered equate with Blavatskyıs intentions for her Theosophical 
works.

In Gregory's Thanksgiving Speech, he speaks about his instruction 
under the polymath Origen - and how the latter taught him the means 
to ascend to what Gilles Quispel has called the Deifying Visionı. For 
me there is a two-fold dynamic in operation here. In the first place, 
there is the literal-historical sense in which two historical 
personages (the chela Gregory, and the Master Origen) are involved in 
an exercise of spiritual instruction in which one guides the other to 
ascend to a vision of the divine, and then encourages him to descend 
in order to teach others (and - as is often the case in this genre -
later take the place of the Master himself). There is, however, a 
second hermeneutical (that is, interpretational) level; as the reader 
follows Gregoryıs levels of instruction, he or she also ascends in a 
concomitant initiatory scale. Thus it is that the reader could well 
be the intended chela through his or her identification with the 
historical personage of Gregory. This is a process which Richard 
Reitzenstein has termed the literary mystery (mystery as in mystery 
cult).

It is my theory that the Master is imminent in the initiatory texts
themselves; i.e., Isis Unveiled, the Mahatma letters, and The Secret 
Doctrine. 
Through reading, the latent Master is released to activate the 
numinous and otherwise ineffable experience of initiation in the 
actual initiand: the reader. Such a dynamic in no way denies the 
physical existence of the Masters, but it does expand the initiatory 
potential of the Theosophical canon beyond its historical narrative 
and into an atemporalised readership. This, surely, is why people 
still read Theosophical works even though the Theosophical
Masters have been quiet (at least in the Society) for many years.

It is my belief that Blavatsky - brilliant textualist that she was  
employed a deliberate textual subversion in her writings. Those who 
read Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine believed that their 
spiritual formation could only be fully realised by individual 
chelaship under a personal Master. In order to achieve this end, the 
aspiring chelas inevitably read more and more of the Theosophical 
canon in preparation for the longed-for event. Ironically,
perhaps, this bias against text paradoxically urged the aspirant to 
learn ever more from authoritative published accounts of the Masters 
teachings. In the and, of course, the process produced many highly 
Theosophically-literate esotericists - many of whom felt nevertheless 
unfulfilled by having failed (as hey saw it) to attract the attention 
of a Master. Yet the dissatisfaction felt by such otherwise ardent 
Theosophists must be seen in the light of the transformations which 
the texts themselves worked upon the readers; after all, a belief in 
the Masters - fostered and fertilised by the Theosophical canon 
had wrought exactly the changes which Blavatsky had sought in her 
Society members: a rejection of religious dogmatism and of the 
dreaded materialism, and an informed, educated acceptance of the 
veracity of the Ancient Wisdom. It might be added that many of 
Blavatskyıs most earnest followers eventually abandoned the Society 
because the Masters did not appear. The most profound irony, of 
course, is that a great number went on to found their own occult
groups on the basis of the great erudition which they had gained by 
means of their Theosophical apprenticeships. Thus it is that - in my 
opinion - the question of the Masters physical existence is 
overshadowed by their more subtle, but altogether more important, 
presence in the texts themselves. That so much commentary is devoted 
by present-day Theosophists to questions of the physical existence of 
the Masters, rather than to their pivotal place in the dynamics of 
personal transformation, is to me a sadness - and to Blavatsky, I
feel, a tragedy. I have several theories as to why the Masters have 
become such a mainstay phenomenon of late modern esoteric and occult 
movements. Some are clearly to do with charismatic authority (and, as 
such, are more properly a factor of the sociology of new religious 
movements), others relate to what might be termed an apostolic 
lineage (the desire to trace oneıs initiation to an original
divine source).

For myself, though, I feel that the main reason that the idea of the 
Master (or what Antoine Faivre has called the topos of the Hidden 
Master) has enjoyed such ubiquity has to do with Orientalism. I must 
stress here that this has nothing to do with the importation into the 
West of specific religious idioms of the East - I, for one, believe 
that the Oriental component of Theosophy has been grossly 
exaggerated. Rather, I think that the popularity of the Master
can be traced, perhaps unsurprisingly, to the ancient world.

Put briefly indeed, roughly the Roman religious world was divided 
between two often competing factions: the Oracular and the 
Philosophic. The former was a species of cultic praxis which 
concentrated upon divination and oracular pronouncements. The latter, 
of course, is best represented by such Graeco-Roman schools as the 
Stoic, the Platonic, and the Epicurean. In other words, there was no 
really satisfying combination of the oracular and philosophic 
standpoints. This, of course, goes far to explaining the attraction 
of Christianity which combined revelatory authority [the oracular]
with a comprehensive ethical, moral, and cosmological teaching [the
philosophic]. Indeed, Christianity - it is crucial to remember was 
itself an Oriental import, for the Orient had always been believed 
(rightly or wrongly) to be able to provide this synthesis of divine 
revelation and reasoned philosophy. For esotericists, this 
combination is nowhere better exemplified than in the figure of 
Hermes Trismegistus who provided both a divine warrant and a 
satisfying philosophical world view).

It is my contention that this form of Orientalism (for Orientalism it 
must surely be) is what has supported the attraction of the figure of 
the Master, and helps to explain why - almost without exception - 
contemporary Masters are deemed to come from outside of the Western 
complex. The Master, after all, combines modern philosophical 
epistemology (forms of thinking) with a divine dictate; he is the 
bridge, if you like, which traditionally was held to exist only in 
the East.

As with all faith claims, they operate beyond the bounds of empirical
survey. As a matter of fact, I am myself entirely uninterested in all
questions of their physical ontology (existence), for a very simple 
reason. 

What matters is that people believe they exist to me that is by far 
the more enticing subject the myth of the creation of Blavatskyıs 
vast writings ex nihilo (from nothing). Olcott makes it quite clear 
that she had about 100 books at the Lamasery and some less charitable 
critics (such as William Emmette Coleman) have found little in Isis 
Unveiled which she could not have cribbed from these texts. Further, 
Countess Wachtmeister and the Keightleys make it clear that Blavatsky 
had a large library at hand for the writing of The Secret Doctrine, 
and employed these and library texts regularly calling for certain 
books at need. Of course, the possession of such texts in no way 
denies her (or, indeed, the Masters) authorship of her works, but 
indicates the breadth of her reading (which should surely be a 
compliment and not a criticism!).

Theosophy erupted in a time of tremendous epistemological change, 
particularly pertaining to history and mythology. Blavatsky's 
Theosophy accommodated the vast prehistories of Lyell, Huxley, and 
Darwin, and it also absorbed the metamythography of Payne-Knight,
Jacolliot, and Higgins (et alii). Thus Blavatsky always and mostly
successfully - walked a fine line between historicity and mythology. 
So, too, did her Masters. Living in an increasingly secular age she 
knew - as I have written elsewhere - that Western society would be 
more prepared to accept a god-like man than a man-like god. Thus 
where other divine figures of ambiguous ontology could occupy a 
mesocosm of religious myth (the imagina - which is not, I hasten to 
say, the imaginary), a nineteenth-century semi-divine figure
would have to walk the ground of fact. This, clearly, posed a 
remarkable challenge, not encountered in earlier centuries.

Theosophical history and extrapolate from that data certain 
observations which may or may not hold to a consensus view - at that 
time or later. It is my hypothesis, for example, (and this follows 
the work of Wouter Hanegraaff and others), that occultism is not a 
reaction against
modernity, but an engagement with modern paradigms such as 
evolutionary theory and progressivism in order to fashion a modern 
religiosity. This modern religiosity I have elsewhere called the 
Tertium Quid - the Third Way between a godless creation 
(asexemplified by scientific rationalism) and an unsympathetic 
dogmatism (as exemplified by exclusivist ecclesiasticism). I also 
argue that - as ever - the presiding deity of the Tertium Quid is
Hermes, who Blavatsky reconfigured as the Theosophical Master. This 
is my hypothesis; many may disagree.

It seems to me that Theosophy emerged from the crucible of
Spiritualism - which is not to suggest that Spiritualism is the 
natural parent of Theosophy (of this I remain unconvinced, but 
interested). Theosophy, for all of its early theurgic aspirations 
(for which see the masterful work of John Patrick Deveney and 
Joscelyn Godwin) did seem to go out of its way to attract those who 
were intellectually-inclined to the study of comparative religion. 
One needs only to review early copies of The Theosophist, Lucifer, 
The Path, etc., to recognise that the leaders were, for the main, 
engaged in constructing a new set of magical correspondences via 
comparative mythology. Indeed, I wonder if we can even imagine the 
heady days when manuscript after manuscript illuminated the 
(sometimes deceptive) commonalities of the worldıs religious
and mythological structures. Every time a putative messiah appeared 
in a newly-translated text, it became grist to the mill of 
Theosophical relativism. 

Just see, for example, the way in which Blavatsky literally pounced 
on the translations by Mead and Kingsford of the Gnostic materials; 
it all added to the ever-expanding Weltanschauung (world view) of 
Theosophy which had it that all phenomena was a leaf from the tree of 
the prisca theologia (the original pure revelation).

The problem, of course (as alluded to supra) was the question of 
revelation. Unless cosmo-philosophical teachings issue from a divine 
source, they will immediately be viewed as arbitrary, contingent, and 
temporal. Blavatsky like all the great religious conceptualisers - 
needed a warrant of universality for her decrees, and the Masters 
provided the key. Whether the Masters existed
physically, of course, is moot, but is actually peripheral to this 
dynamic. 

After all, Blavatsky would bear the brunt of the opprobrium, but also 
the hagiographic attention from disciples; she was the mouthpiece for 
good or ill.

The question, then, devolves upon the notion of revelation. 
Technically, of course, all the materials in the Theosophical canon 
(Isis Unveiled, the Mahatma Letters, The Secret Doctrine) are the 
direct or indirect vox dei, if you like. 

That is, all of Theosophy's core teachings claim a revelatory 
authority which exists on the level of a divine dictate (which is to 
say they accord with the progressivist cosmo-historical structures 
which instantiate the divine in the Theosophical idiom). 
 
If the philosophical aspects of the teachings are removed from the 
revelatory authority (what he calls, attractively, a 
phenomenologically based theology, do they still have credence or 
value.

I would be disingenuous if I didn't state that there are several 
components of the Theosophical corpus which give me pause, and a few 
which I believe will ultimately need to be excised. As an Australian 
(though not an indigene) I an upset by the gross Race theory which 
Blavatsky employed - based, no doubt, on Herbert Spencer. I am 
disappointed that some textual-literalist Theosophists attempt to 
perpetuate some of the more confronting racist stereotypes of
Blavatskian Anthropogenesis. I am even more concerned that several 
aspects of Theosophical teachings (from The Secret Doctrine, inter 
alia) have contributed to truly heinous racial apartheids - one need 
only look at certain figures in the Reich to appreciate the 
dissemination of such Theosophical Race theory.

I mention this particular construct because it seems to me to 
elucidate a particular problem for many religionist Theosophists. Is 
such Race theory divinely inspired (which is to say, founded on the 
Masters teaching)? The answer is clearly ³yes², particularly when the 
Mahatma letters are consulted, some of which would today be legally 
actionable in certain countries. 

Nevertheless, it seems to me that Theosophy as a revolutionary 
movement (for such it was, in a limited way), is predicated upon what 
Cardinal Newman (a contemporary of much of the Theosophical 
endeavour) called doctrinal developmentalism. He argued (I here 
interpret his works in a liberal vein) that the Spirit (or Geist) of 
the Age spoke in a language understandable and appropriate for the 
people. This might sound somewhat banal these days, but was quite 
challenging at the time, when it was considered that revelation was
closed and that interpretation was devolved solely upon the 
episcopacy (of which, unsurprisingly, he was part).

Thus it is that Theosophy, arising as it did in a period in which 
revelation could be developed, is enabled to offer many and varied 
revelations as long as they stay (roughly) within the Blavatskian 
template. The problem with this position, of course, is that it opens 
the door for quite baroque variations:
some inside the Society (such as Leadbeater), others outside (such as 
Bailey, the Ballards, the Prophets). It seems that it is not possible 
to have one's cake (doctrinal developmentalism) and eat it 
(factionalism, schism, contradictory revelation).

In short, the quandary is in many ways the same as that for other 
creeds which are based upon a meta-empirical revelation vouchsafed to 
one individual who subsequently dies. The charismatic authority which 
resides in that person is rarely transferred successfully to another 
as competing claims to authority intervene, and peoplesı views of 
orthodoxy vary.

Is it possible to have a Theosophy without the Masters ? Or, indeed, 
the Masters without Theosophy? Is it possible to find in Theosophy a 
religious or ethical system removed from its metaphysical dimension; 
in other words, is it OK simply to say that although Blavatsky might 
have made it all up, itıs still valuable - if not divinely revealed 
Or, indeed, is it possible to say that the Masters most certainly 
exist, but that what Blavatsky published in their names is wholly 
fraudulent, and thus vacuous and useless.

Interestingly, each of these positions has been followed by various 
parties since 1891, none dare I say wholly successfully. In my 
view, the problem has been tragically simple and, perhaps amusingly, 
mundane. The Society has been caught up in exactly the same 
existential paradox as those creeds it was created to counter: IS THE 
GOD-MAN REAL? What is crucial, in my opinion, for the future of 
Theosophy - indeed, what will save both its revelatory authority
(its phenomenologically based theology and its transformative 
potentiality its philosophical aspects is for Theosophists not so 
much to come to terms with the god-man, but to redefine what it means 
to be real.

The above is from a long mail that I shortened a bit. 
(Brigitte)