Blavatsky’s Universal Brotherhood - Tim Rudbøg

Some selected passages from: The West Moves East Blavatsky’s “Universal Brotherhood” in India, Tim Rudbøg, 2020. For more on the history of this idea and Blavatsky's views, see Jean-Marie Ragon, Mazzini, Leo Tolstoy,  Blavatsky, Mahatma Letters

In order to counter these new social inequalities and problems— perceived as resulting from private property rights, capitalism, and industrialism— radical thinkers proposed new alternative models of society. Henri de Saint- Simon (1760– 1825), François Marie Charles Fourier (1772– 1837), and Robert Owen (1771– 1858) are credited with being among the first to define modern so­cialism;(11) Karl Marx (1818– 83) and Friedrich Engels (1820– 95) defined modern communism in 1848 with the publication of their Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei.(12) Numerous reform movements were formed, and the literary landscape was flooded with many books in the utopian genre.(13) 

Elihu Burritt

Instrumental to the idea of universal brotherhood was Elihu Burritt (1810– 79), an American blacksmith, pacifist, and peace advocate with extraordinary autodidactic abilities. At the age of thirty Burritt was able to translate thirty languages, increasing to about one hundred languages by the time of his death. He was instrumental in the pub­lication of a whole spate of short- lived magazines related to peace and broth­erhood such as Literary Geminæ (1839– 40), The Christian Citizen (1844), The Advocate of Peace and Universal Brotherhood (1846), The Bond of Brotherhood (1854), Burritt’s Citizen of the World (1855), and The North and the South, and New Britain Journal (1857– 59). Burritt had also been a member of the American Peace Society until 1846, after which he founded his own League of Universal Brotherhood. Burritt was furthermore involved in international peace congresses in 1848, 1849, and 1850 and received an honorary doctorate from Yale University in 1874. Burritt’s League of Universal Brotherhood was the first international peace movement against war, slavery, social injustice, and in support of solidarity between all colors and classes.(14) 

James Otis Wattles (1809– 59), a figure now more or less lost to history, is another important reform initiator relevant to the idea of universal brotherhood.(15)  A Yale graduate, he fought for the abolitionist cause by freeing slaves and establishing black schools. He later became interested in spiritualism and was instrumental in establishing several reform projects. In 1842 he co- founded The Society for Universal Inquiry and Reform (1842– 46) in Clinton County, Ohio with John A. Collins, Orson S. Murray, and others, as “an alliance of Hicksite Quakers and New England Garrisonian abolitionists.”(16) This society sought to implement a new social order upon the principles of liberty, justice, and equality under the banner of fraternal brotherhood.(17) Following its failure Wattles bought “Utopia,” a site in Cincinnati, Ohio formerly occupied by the utopian- socialist Fourierist community, which had closed the same year due to lack of funds. Here he, together with other reformers, significantly founded what they termed the “Universal Brotherhood,” also known as the “Spiritualist Community” (1846– 48).(18) The “Universal Brotherhood” was to implement the principles of Christ as formulated in the gospels to rid the evils of society, but unfortunately the society was flooded by the great Ohio flood of December 13, 1847, in which over half of its members died and Wattles only barely escaped.(19) His final project was the Grand Prairie Harmonial Institute, an association for education and reform purposes, founded in Warren County Indiana in 1853. However, it only lasted a year.(20)

The rise of spiritualism in the late 1840s was closely related to the wide­spread reform milieu of its day.(21) The spiritualist HudsonTuttle (1836– 1910), also from Ohio, and the spiritualist, Freemason, medical doctor, and fu­ture Theosophist James M. Peebles (1822– 1922) wrote in The Year- Book of Spiritualism for 1871 that spiritualism “underlies all genuine reform- movements,  physiological, educational, social, philanthropic, religious.”(22) Tuttle and Peebles also attempted to define the multifaceted spiritualist movement. They agreed that to define such a diversified individualistic movement was im­mensely difficult, but that the most basic belief common to all spiritualists must be the belief in the possible communication with the dead.(23) However, they significantly argued that the most common aim of the spir­itualist movement is “to reconstruct society upon the principles of eternal justice,— the principles of equality, charity, and a universal brotherhood.”(24)

Andrew Jackson Davis

The idea of universal brotherhood was important to a number of spiritualists in various guises. The prolific spiritualist writer Andrew Jackson Davis (1826– 1910) laid the spiritual foundation for its importance throughout his writings.25) He emphasized that everything in nature is harmoniously interlinked through what he termed the great “Law of Association.”(26) This intimate connection unifies all life in a universal brotherhood.(27) Many religions have tried to es­tablish a universal brotherhood, Davis argued, but each sect or religion seeks to do this by converting others to their own beliefs and thereby by opposing other religions.(28) This obviously causes more discord than unity; hence a new universal system is needed.(29) In 1850 Davis established his Harmonial Brotherhood, organized according to the human body- organism, and inspired by Plato’s Republic, with sectors of the new society functioning as the feet, heart, head, and so on.(30) In 1855 T. E. Spencer (no date) and his wife Martha Spencer (no date) established the controversial communal Harmonial Society in Harmony Springs, Benton County, Arkansas, which, according to Emma Hardinge Britten’s account, was to form one common brotherhood presided over by angels eventually leading to a universal brotherhood of man.(31)

Albert Mackey

Finally, it should be noted that it has been a part of the social- redemptive ide­ology of Freemasonry to practice the Enlightenment ideal of universal broth­erhood, to reconcile distinctions between religions, classes, and races and to work for its global implementation believed to lead to a new enlightened age.(32) The prolific nineteenth- century freemasonic writer Albert G. Mackey (1807– 81) stated in 1859 that

When the day comes in which all men shall acknowledge one strong tie of brotherhood, then, will be the true millennium; and it is a glorious thought that the mission of Masonry is to bring forth this consummation, to teach the doc­trine of a universal brotherhood, and to enforce the necessity of man’s giving a helping hand to man.(33)

Clearly, ideas of universal brotherhood have a long history and the concept had been used, as just shown, both nominally and ideologically prior to the founding of the Theosophical Society by spiritualists and Freemasons. What this indicates is that in the background of Blavatsky’s notion of universal brother­hood we find mainstream enlightenment ideals that were given life in modern esotericism. Blavatsky herself acknowledges part of this historical background, and historically her discourse for universal brotherhood should, as is argued here, be regarded as part of this wider Enlightenment and social reform milieu of the day.(34) (pp. 275-77)

When two Westerners, such as Blavatsky and Olcott, came to India in February 1879 and contrary to all expectations regarded ancient India, Hinduism, and Buddhism as superior to the West and to “Church Christianity”— they joined forces with the Indian reformers such as the Arya Samaj and the Sri Lankan Buddhists— their stance of course held great appeal for the Hindus and Buddhists; but, simultaneously, it was a major irritation to the Christian missionaries, who attacked the Theosophists in India from the very beginning.(69)

Blavatsky and Olcott’s strategy was to undertake extensive travels throughout India with an outreach campaign to the Indians.(70) Instead of converting the Hindus and Buddhists as the Christian missionaries had done, they themselves took pansil, that is, converted to Buddhism on May 25, 1880, in Ceylon (71) and helped in the design of the Buddhist flag as well.(72) They supported the revival of Indian culture by establishing free schools teaching Sanskrit; constructing a massive oriental library in Adyar; and promoting Hindu and Buddhist cul­ture and philosophy through the activity of the Theosophical Society and The Theosophist, which in part was dedicated to “Oriental Philosophy, Art and Literature.”(73) Instead of regarding the Indian religions as heathen superstition, as many Christians tended to do, and the Indian people as inferior, as the British government and mainstream anthropology did, Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society promoted universal brotherhood without distinction of race, color, sex, or class. This overall strategy of extending the Enlightenment ideal of equality and human rights to the Indian natives helped return and even enhance the orig­inal dignity, unity, and self- respect of the natives and proved a great success; so much so, that by 1884 the Theosophical Society in India alone had grown to one hundred Indian branches.(74) (pp.281-82)

During the following ten years (1881– 91) heated debates with and critique of the Christian missionaries and their idea of brotherhood toward the Indians continued.(81) Blavatsky acknowledged that the idea of universal brotherhood originated with the Christians and also praises them for this,(82) but she found more vice and strife in much Christian activity among the Indians than actual brotherhood.(83) Blavatsky continued to focus on her idea of universal broth­erhood and the cause “to revive the philosophical Self- respect of the Indian people”(84) and to “prove to occidental scholars that the ancestors of those they now look down upon as of an ‘inferior race,’ were intellectual, moral and spir­itual giants.”(85) Such recognition from the British, that the Indians are not infe­rior, Blavatsky hoped, would not only lead to a universal brotherhood of equal human rights but also to a “link between the East and the West, uniting them both in a bond of Intellectual Brotherhood.”(86) (p. 283)

Blavatsky took the view that the French Revolution had not succeeded in implementing brotherhood among men,(108) just as she criticized the Freemasons and Christians for having failed to practice it.(109) The causes still hindering its realization, Blavatsky found, can be categorized as existing on sociological, ideo­logical, and individual levels. On the sociological level, all hegemonic structures upheld either by secular or sacral institutions and organizations, that unnatu­rally divide and separate people, are a hindrance to the true implementation of brotherhood, as in the case of the British rule in India, the Christian Churches, and the traditional Hindu caste system, mentioned earlier.(110) This also included the un- brotherly strife between nations.(111) On the ideological level, Blavatsky found modern materialism and conservative theological dogmas to be a great hindrance due to their reductionism and their intolerance.(112) Finally on the indi­vidual level, Blavatsky generally argued that men’s natural selfishness, prejudice, greed, and bias are obstacles to be overcome.(113)

Similar to other reformers of the day, Blavatsky argued that it is the mission of the Theosophical Society to counteract these obstacles. This should, however, not be done in any manner involving bloody revolution (114) or the implementa­tion of diplomatic policy,(115) as it has to come naturally and voluntarily by moral regeneration,(116) “inner enlightenment,”(117) and the gradual awakening of the re­alization among all men that humanity is naturally a brotherhood and that the true law that governs inequalities is karma.(118) (p. 285)

12 The West Moves East Blavatsky’s “Universal Brotherhood” in India Tim Rudbøg

The West Moves East In: Imagining the East. Edited by: Tim Rudbøg and Erik Reenberg S, Oxford University Press (2020). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190853884.003.0013

Notes

11. Davies, Europe: Europe: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 836– 37.
12. Ibid., 837.
13. See Jean Pfaelze, The Utopian Novel in America, 1886– 1896: The Politics of Form (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984); and James Morris and Andrea L. Kross, The A to Z of Utopianism (Plymouth: Scarecrow Press, 2004).
14. David Cortright, Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 31– 32; see also Elihu Burritt, Lectures and Speeches (London: Sampson, Low, Son & Marston, 1869); and Merle Curti, The Learned Blacksmith: The Letters and Journals of Elihu Burritt (New York: Wilson- Erickson, 1937). Blavatsky knew of Burritt and mentions him in 1889; see H. P. Blavatsky, “On Pseudo- Theosophy,” in HPBCW (1973), 11:45– 61 (56).
15. Morris and Kross, The A to Z of Utopianism, 321– 22; see also, Thomas D. Hamm, God’s Government Begun: The Society for Universal Inquiry and Reform, 1842– 1846 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996).
16. Hamm, God’s Government Begun, xv.
17. Ibid., 235– 36. The society was organized into eight communities. “One (Skaneateles) in New York, three (Marlborough, Prairie Home, and Highland Home) in Ohio, and four (Union Home, West Grove or Fraternal Home, Kristeen, and Grand Prairie) in Indiana.” None lasted more than a year, ibid., xvi.
18. Ibid., 219; and Morris and Kross, The A to Z of Utopianism, 322.
19. Hamm, God’s Government Begun, 219.
20. Ibid., 221; and Morris and Kross, The A to Z of Utopianism, 123.

21. Hamm, God’s Government Begun, 222; Robert S. Cox, “Spiritualism,” in Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in America: Metaphysical, New Age, and Neopagan Movements, 5 vols., ed. Eugene V. Gallagher and W. Michael Ashcraft (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006), 3:27– 47 (35); see also Ann Braude, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth- Century America, 2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, (2002), 1– 9.
22. Hudson Tuttle and James M. Peebles, The Year- Book of Spiritualism for 1871 (Boston, MA: William White, 1871), 21.
23. Ibid., 21.
24. Ibid.; see also Hudson Tuttle, Arcana of Spiritualism: A Manual of Spiritual Science and Philosophy (Boston, MA: Adams, 1871), 16, 22, 446; and Cox, “Spiritualism,” 33.
25. For more details on Davis see Phillip Charles Lucas, “Davis, Andrew Jackson, 11.8.1826 Blooming Grove, New York, 13.1.1910 Watertown, Massachusetts,” in Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism, ed. Wouter J. Hanegraaff et al., 2 vols. (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2005), 1:299– 301. For the distinction between spiritualism and Davis’s “Harmonial Philosophy” see Ann Taves, Fits, Trances, & Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 400.
26. Andrew Jackson Davis, The Harmonial Philosophy, ed. by a Doctor of Hermetic Science [A. E. Waite] (London: William Rider & Son, 1917), 267– 71; and Andrew Jackson Davis, The Principles: Her Divine Revelations and a Voice to Mankind (Boston, MA: Colby and Rich, 1847), 734.
27. Andrew Jackson Davis, The Great Harmonia: Concerning the Seven Mental States; The Seer, 5 vols. (Boston, MA: Benjamin B. Mussey, 1853), 3:125; and Andrew Jackson Davis, The Penetralia: Being Harmonial Answers to Important Questions (Boston, MA: W. White, 1868), 61.
28. Andrew Jackson Davis, The Principles of Nature: Her Divine Revelations and a Voice to Mankind (Boston, MA: Colby and Rich, 1847), v, see also 401, 575.
29. Ibid., v.
30. R. P. Ambler, “New Movement at Hartford,” The Spirit Messenger 1, 42 (1851): 333– 34; James Hogg, Hogg’s Instructor 9, new series (Edinburgh: James Hogg, 1852), 500– 501; and Jean L. Silver- Isenstadt, Shameless: The Visionary Life of Mary Gove Nichols (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 195, 287.
31. Geoffery K. Nelson, Spiritualism and Society (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), 20; and Emma Hardinge [later Britten], Modern American Spiritualism: A Twenty Years’ Record (New York: printed by the author, 1870), 365, 367.
32. Philip G. Nord, The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in Nineteenth- Century France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 25– 26, 85; Jessica Harland- Jacobs, Builders of Empire: Freemasons and British Imperialism, 1717– 1927 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 235– 36; and Clifford Putney, “Service over Secrecy: How Lodge- Style Fraternalism Yielded to Men’s Service Clubs,” in Freemasonry in Context: History, Ritual, Controversy, ed. Art DeHoyos and S. Brent Morris (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), 105– 16 (107).
33. Albert G. Mackey, “Monthly Masonic Miscellany: Brotherhood,” The American Freemasons’ New Monthly Magazine, July 1859, 73. For later Freemasonic accounts of the importance of “universal brotherhood,” see S. R. Pachment, Ancient Operative Masonry (San Francisco, CA: San Francisco Center, Rosicrucian Fellowship, 1930), 10– 12; and Deman S. Wagstaff, Wagstaff’s Standard Masonry (San Francisco, CA: Walter N. Brunt, 1922), 104.
34. The Enlightenment heritage has been demonstrated in Joscelyn Godwin, The Theosophical Enlightenment (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994). 

69. Jones, Socio- Religious Reform Movements, 171; Moulton, “Beginnings of the Theosophical Movement,” 117; and Augustine, Social Equality in Indian Society, 130.
70. See Cranston, Extraordinary Life, 191– 284.
71. See Olcott, Old Diary Leaves, 2:166– 69; Catherine Wessinger, Dell deChant, and William Michael Ashcraft, “Theosophy, New Thought, and New Age Movements,” in Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America, 3 vols., ed. Rosemary Skinner Keller and Rosemary Radford Ruether (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 2:753– 67 (755); and Cranston, Extraordinary Life, 214.
72. Ibid., 3:362– 84; Richard Francis Gombrich, Theravāda Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 2003), 185– 87; Richard Francis Gombrich and Gananath Obeyesekere, Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 204– 5; Cheah, Race and Religion in American Buddhism, 33; Stephen R. Prothero, The White Buddhist : The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 171; Thomas A. Tweed, The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844– 1912: Victorian Culture & the Limits of Dissent (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 56; Murphet, Yankee Beacon, 142, 320; George D. Bond, The Buddhist Revival in Sri Lanka: Religious Tradition, Reinterpretation and Response (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1992), 49; and Cranston, Extraordinary Life, 193.

73. Wessinger, deChant, and Ashcraft, “Theosophy, New Thought, and New Age Movements,” 755; Moulton, “Beginnings of the Theosophical Movement,” 115; Cheah, Race and Religion in American Buddhism, 36– 38; Murphet, Yankee Beacon, 131– 52; H. P. Blavatsky, “What Good Has Theosophy Done in India,” in HPBCW (1986), 9:129– 34; and Blavatsky, “Our Three Objects,” 391– 400.
74. Jones, Socio- Religious Reform Movements, 171– 74; Moulton, “Beginnings of the Theosophical Movement,” 116– 17; W. Michael Ashcraft, The Dawn of The New Cycle: Point Loma Theosophists and American Culture (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002), 199n68; and Robert S. Ellwood, Theosophy: A Modern Expression of the Wisdom of the Ages (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1986), 213.

81. H. P. Blavatsky, “A False ‘Witness,’” in HPBCW (1995), 3:131– 38 (132– 37); H. P. Blavatsky, “A Word with ‘Zero’ (Reply by a Theosophist),” in HPBCW (1991), 4:358– 65; H. P. Blavatsky, “Footnotes to ‘The Status of Jesus,’” in HPBCW (1991), 4:603– 604; H. P. Blavatsky, “The Rev. W. Hastie’s Karma and the Progress of Poesy in Bengal,” in HPBCW (1997), 5:350– 51; H. P. Blavatsky, “The Neutrality of the Senate House,” in HPBCW (1989), 6:166– 68; H. P. Blavatsky, “The Theosophical Mahatmas,” in HPBCW (1987), 7:241– 49 (246– 48); H. P. Blavatsky, “Misconceptions,” in HPBCW (1990), 8:70– 91 (89– 90); and H. P. Blavatsky, “Civilization, The Death of Art and Beauty,” in HPBCW (1982), 13:177– 90 (188).
82. H. P. Blavatsky, “Lucifer to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Greeting!,” in HPBCW (1990), 8:268– 83 (273); H. P. Blavatsky, “The Beacon of the Unknown,” in HPBCW (1973), 11:248– 83 (282); and Blavatsky, Key to Theosophy, 41.
83. See note 82.
84. H. P. Blavatsky, “A Personal Explanation,” in HPBCW (1995), 3:440– 48 (448); and Blavatsky, “A Word with ‘Zero,’ ” 360.
85. H. P. Blavatsky, “Comment on ‘Practical Work for Theosophists,’” in HPBCW (1989), 6:211– 12 (212); see also Blavatsky, “Misconceptions,” 90– 91.
86. Blavatsky, “Comment on ‘Practical Work for Theosophists,’ ” 212; Blavatsky, “Misconceptions,” 91; see also Charles Johnston and H. P. Blavatsky, “Helena Petrovna Blavatsky,” in HPBCW (1990), 8:392– 409 (404– 409).

108. Blavatsky, “Misconceptions,” 86. Blavatsky did, however, identify herself with the ideals of the French Revolution on numerous occasions (see for example Sinnett, Incidents in the Life of Madam Blavatsky, for her juvenile declaration that she wanted to be a “Goddess of Liberty” all her life after hearing Henriette Peigneur, her old French governess, relate her memories of the Revolution), but apparently did not think that its attempted implementation of brotherhood had succeeded. F. K. Gaboriau (editor of Le Lotus), however, argued in a footnote to “Misconceptions,” referenced previously, that Blavatsky was misinformed about the state of affairs in France due to her long absence from France and due to the foreign newspapers she read, which only sought to soil French democracy; see Blavatsky, “Misconceptions,” 86n.
109. See previous note, but see also Blavatsky, “Letter from H. P. Blavatsky to the Second American Convention,” 243.
110. Blavatsky, “Lucifer to the Archbishop,” 273; Blavatsky, “The Theosophical Society: Its Mission and Its Future,” 75; H. P. Blavatsky, “Second Letter of H. P. Blavatsky to the American Convention,” in HPBCW (1973), 11:163– 68; and Blavatsky, Key to Theosophy, 40, 305.
111. Blavatsky, Key to Theosophy, 40.
112. Blavatsky, “Letter from H. P. Blavatsky to the Second American Convention,” 244; Blavatsky, “Second Letter of H. P. Blavatsky,” 163– 68; Blavatsky, “Beacon of the Unknown,” 282; H. P. Blavatsky, “Letter to the Fifth Annual Convention of the American Section of the Theosophical Society,” in HPBCW (1982), 13:171– 75 (174– 75); and Blavatsky, “Civilization, the Death of Art and Beauty,” 188. For further details on Blavatsky’s view of conservative theology see Rudbøg, “Blavatsky’s Theosophy in Context,” 206– 50.
113. Blavatsky, “The Theosophical Society: Its Mission and Its Future,” 75; Blavatsky, “Second Letter of H. P. Blavatsky,” 163– 68; H. P. Blavatsky, “The Fall of Ideals,” in HPBCW (1987), 12:33– 52 (51); and Blavatsky, Key to Theosophy, 40.
114. Blavatsky, “Beacon of the Unknown,” 283.
115. Blavatsky, “The Theosophical Society: Its Mission and Its Future,” 74.
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116. Blavatsky, “What Is Theosophy?,” 502.
117. Blavatsky, “The Theosophical Society: Its Mission and Its Future,” 74.
118. Ibid., 74– 75; Blavatsky, “Beacon of the Unknown,” 283; see also Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, 1:644– 45.