Theos-Talk Archives (February 2002 Message tt00063)

In 1928 World population was at 2 milliard people, the TS at 45.000.

In 1980 world population was at 4.5 milliard people, TS at 34.391 
according to Gregory Tillet?s figures. 

That is a loss in compairance of 66% of TS membership during this 
period of time.

If membership since 1980 went up according to the rise in world 
population since then wich has again been considerable, the the ?66% 
would remain stable, if membership did not sufficiently go up, the 
the 66% would have become more since 1980.

I also attempted to figure out how much of the total world population 
Theosophists made up, but I came up with only a fraction of (much 
less then) 1% of the world population that after 150 years are 
Theosophists.Wich is rather remarkable if one considers that theirs 
is the religion of all religions, why after 150 years and a library 
full of books that have been written on it with at least one or the 
other translated in about all languages of the world, did hardly 
anybody catched on to the claimed facts ?


 
Brigitte

PS I also aquired some figures from the UK but these are even more 
deppressive if taken for itself so I left them out because according 
to these it would be much worser then –66%, namely in just 7 years 
time from 1928, 5,170 members in 1935 there where only 3,520, and has 
since dropped much more dramatic, checking it with world population 
in 1928 versus 1980. 

--- In theos-talk@y..., <gregory@z...> wrote:
> In researching the influence of Leadbeater on the Adyar TS, I 
accumulated 
> large amounts of membrship statistics and included an appendix on 
> membership figures in my PhD thesis. The following is a brief 
summary of 
> the figures. For all sorts of methodological reasons (e.g. 
different 
> "official" sources sometimes give different figures) they cannot be 
> regarded as definitive, and are drawn from a range of sources (e.g. 
> Annual Reports). I have figures for every year from 1907-1983, but 
only 
> give sample years below. No accurate records exist for 1875-1906. 
> Josphine Ransom estimate 10000 as the memebrship in 1900.
> 
> Year
> 1907 14863
> 1910 20356
> 1915 25696
> 1920 36350
> 1925 41645
> 1928 45098
> 1930 39311
> 1935 30317
> 1940 23644
> 1945 29327
> 1950 32564
> 1955 32902
> 1960 33875
> 1965 31424
> 1970 31721
> 1975 34357
> 1980 34391
> 
> During what might be called the Great Krishnamurti Decade (1923-
1932) the 
> membership rose and fell, but the above figures don't really tell 
the 
> full story: between 1923 and 1932, 47,800 members joined the Adyar 
TS, 
> but 54,000 left it - a much more interesting statistic than the 
simple 
> change in the overall number of members, especially since those who 
left 
> included many members of long-standing.
> Where state census statistics exist, these provide interesting 
additional 
> information. In 1916 the American Section of Adyar claimed 6648 
members; 
> the US Bureau of Census figure for the same year was 5097. In 1911 
the 
> Australia Section of Adyar claimed 1004 members, but the national 
census 
> reported 781; in 1921 Adyar claimed 2168, but the census reported 
1102.
> 
> Dr Gregory Tillett