History of the Theosophical Society
Organized in New York City in 1875, the Society's principal founders were Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the first Russian woman to be naturalized as an American citizen, and Henry Steel Olcott, a prominent lawyer and journalist who became the first President of the Society. Madame Blavatsky was a Russian of noble birth, whose mother was a social novelist and whose grandmother was an accomplished amateur scientist. As a young woman, she traveled all over the world in search of wisdom about the nature of life and the reason for human existence. Eventually, Blavatsky brought the spiritual wisdoms of the East and of ancient Western mysteries to the modern West, where they were virtually unknown. Her writings became the first exposition of modern Theosophy.
Colonel Olcott was a veteran of the Civil War, during which he had been a special investigator into corruption in the armed services and after which he was a member of the commission appointed to investigate the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. He was also an internationally renowned agricultural authority. Olcott related the timeless wisdom of Theosophy to the cultures of both East and West, applied it to everyday life, and built the Society into an international organization.
Associated with these two were William Quan Judge, a young New York attorney, and a number of other individuals interested in the philosophy expounded by Madame Blavatsky. The latter included General Abner Doubleday, the legendary founder of baseball, and later the inventor Thomas Alva Edison.
In 1879, the principal founders, Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott, moved to India, where the Society spread rapidly. In 1882, they established the Society's international headquarters in Adyar, a suburb of Madras (currently Chennai), where it has since remained. They also visited Sri Lanka, where Olcott was so active in promoting social welfare among oppressed Buddhists that even now he is a national hero of that land. Today the Society has members in almost 70 countries around the world.
The administrative center of the Section in the United States (called "Olcott" in honor of the President-Founder) is located in Wheaton, Illinois. Approximately 110 local branches and study centers in major cities of the country carry on active Theosophical work. A considerable number of members-at-large are affiliated directly with the national center.
View Video of the history of the Theosophical Society in America.
The Life and Work of Henry S. Olcott
The History of Our Name
Russian noblewoman Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and American Colonel Henry Steel Olcott founded the Theosophical Society with attorney William Quan Judge and others in late 1875 in New York City. After his two major co-founders departed for India in 1878 to establish the international headquarters of the Society in Adyar, India (near Madras, now known as Chennai), young Mr. Judge diligently carried on the work of advancing interest in Theosophy within the United States. By 1886 he had established an American Section of the international Society comprised of branches in fourteen cities. Rapid growth took place under his guidance, so that by 1895 there were 102 American branches with nearly six thousand members. Madame Blavatsky died in 1891, leaving Colonel Olcott and English social activist Annie Besant as the principal leaders of the international movement based in Adyar, and William Quan Judge ably heading the important American Section.
During the contentious Ninth Annual Convention of the American Section in 1895, eighty-three lodges voted for autonomy from the international Theosophical Society in Adyar. The international President-Founder, Colonel Olcott, interpreted this action as secession, and revoked charters of those lodges, whose members reorganized into the first “Theosophical Society in America” under William Quan Judge. After Judge's death the following year, Katherine Tingley stepped into the leadership of that organization, and in 1898 folded the Theosophical Society in America into the Universal Brotherhood, resulting in the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society. After several changes in location and name, the successor organization is now known as the Theosophical Society Pasadena. Other groups split off from Tingley's organization over the years, becoming Theosophical Society in America (Hargrove), the Theosophical Society of New York, the United Lodge of Theosophists, and Temple of the People in Halcyon, California. The second “Theosophical Society in America” headed by Ernest Temple Hargrove dropped the words "in America" from its name in 1908.
Five American lodges that had opposed the 1895 secession retained their affiliation with the international Society in Adyar. They formed a new American Section known as the American Theosophical Society under the leadership of Alexander Fullerton. Extensive lecture tours by Annie Besant and Constance Wachtmeister elicited much new interest in the American Theosophical Society, so that by 1900 the organization claimed 1286 members and 71 branches.
In an attempt to clarify the complex history of the Theosophical movement in the United States, Dorothy Bell has created a diagram along the lines of a family tree, which can be viewed at American Family Tree of Theosophy
The American Theosophical Society was legally renamed "The Theosophical Society in America" in 1934, and has existed under that name ever since. Like other Theosophical groups, the organization aspires to educate the public about the principles of Theosophy through publications, public programs, and local group activities