The theosophical historians continue to dig up some
surprising treasures from the vaults. It turns out that the American Platonist
Thomas Moore Johnson was a card-carrying Theosophist and left behind a sizeable
chunk of correspondence with quite a few Theosophists of the day. So we have in
this volume letters from J.D. Buck, Josephine Cables, Abner Doubleday, William
Q. Judge, Anna Kingsford, Kenneth MacKenzie, Edward Maitland, Damodar
Mavalankar, GRS Mead, HS Olcott, William Oxley, Seth Pancoast, James Pryse and
John Yarker among others.
It`s a real treat to be able to get first hand
accounts of the interests, challenges and struggles of the very early days (the
letters date from 1881 to 1911). There is also much correspondence dealing with
the administrative business concerning The Platonist, the magazine Johnson
published. Most of the correspondence is fairly brief and mundane with little
in the way of practical esoteric information (with the exception of James
Pryse), although each section has a helpful introduction and copious explanatory footnotes. But the real meat of the book is the letters from lesser-known Theosophists Elliott B. page (55
pp.) and S.H. Randall (79 pp.). Here we have sufficient material to form a
serial narrative arc, each with their own personal, dramatic twists and turns with
two very different fates: Page went on to become a distinguished long-standing
Theosophist with the Hargrove Theosophical group and Randall had to bow out due
to family pressures.
To spice things up, many letters discuss the
well-known Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor affair. This is all water under the
bridge, but back in the day, GRS Mead hashed it out in Lucifer (p.54).
Editor Patrick D. Bowen, in his extensive,
well-researched introduction, more or less follows the tack set by Joscelyn
Godwin and John Patrick Deveney in
their works on the subject.
For historians, this book should be quite useful as it
fills in a noticeable gap of information pertaining to the 1880-1885 period of
American Theosophy, prior to William Q. Judge’s founding of the Path magazine
in 1886, beginning a remarkable ten-year run that was one of the greatest
expansion periods for any organisation in modern American alternative
spirituality history. Keeping in mind that the Coulomb /Hodgson affair occurred just
prior to the HBL business, certain letters would seem to indicate that the crisis
of the 1885-86 affected the American section more seriously than previously believed. Moreover, it probably
also gives more information on the history of the TS Esoteric Section inasmuch
that more evidence is given in favor of the idea of the HBL affair having
spurred the creation of the ES. Also, there is lots of general coverage of the esoteric movement of the late 19th century period.
On the critical side, whether Johnson’s participation
in various esoteric groups is his “greatest legacy” (p. 82) seems a little
overly optimistic in my opinion, I don’t think this new information will overshadow
his reputation as a prominent, pioneering American Platonic scholar.
Also, it would have been nice to have more biographical
information about Johnson himself beyond the context related to the
correspondence. Moreover, the last part of the introduction seems to branch off into digressions and speculations that seem unfocused, while ignoring, for example, the correspondence with GRS Mead, his letter of 1911 of which is the lastest of the collection.
Letters to the Sage: Selected Correspondence of Thomas Moore Johnson:
Volume One: The Esotericists
http://www.academia.edu/23150366/Letters_to_the_Sage_Selected_Correspondence_of_Thomas_Moore_Johnson_Volume_One_The_Esotericists
http://ehbritten.blogspot.ca/2016/03/new-typhon-press-release-selected.html#!/2016/03/new-typhon-press-release-selected.html
Prometheus Trust has also released The Collected Works of Thomas Moore Johnson:
Thomas Moore Johnson (1851-1919) can rightly be said to be a great American Platonist: he was one of a number of men and women of that period who sought to promulgate the philosophy of the Platonic tradition as a spiritual and intellectual discipline. Had not the tide of rationalist and sceptical thinking run so strongly in the last one hundred years, Johnson – along with his fellow philosophers such as Hiram K Jones, William Torrey Harris and Bronson Alcott – would today be recognised as a great contributor to the cause of true philosophy in the modern west.
http://www.prometheustrust.co.uk/html/other_books.html#tmj
update: Editor K. Paul Johnson has responded to this post:
http://adepts.light.org/2017/11/06/g-r-s-mead-on-the-light-of-egypt/
http://www.academia.edu/23150366/Letters_to_the_Sage_Selected_Correspondence_of_Thomas_Moore_Johnson_Volume_One_The_Esotericists
http://ehbritten.blogspot.ca/2016/03/new-typhon-press-release-selected.html#!/2016/03/new-typhon-press-release-selected.html
Prometheus Trust has also released The Collected Works of Thomas Moore Johnson:
Thomas Moore Johnson (1851-1919) can rightly be said to be a great American Platonist: he was one of a number of men and women of that period who sought to promulgate the philosophy of the Platonic tradition as a spiritual and intellectual discipline. Had not the tide of rationalist and sceptical thinking run so strongly in the last one hundred years, Johnson – along with his fellow philosophers such as Hiram K Jones, William Torrey Harris and Bronson Alcott – would today be recognised as a great contributor to the cause of true philosophy in the modern west.
http://www.prometheustrust.co.uk/html/other_books.html#tmj
update: Editor K. Paul Johnson has responded to this post:
http://adepts.light.org/2017/11/06/g-r-s-mead-on-the-light-of-egypt/
