Blavatsky and neo-theosophy (Cyclical History, archetypes) (1/3)

HBO’s  Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God, Docuseries was the 8^th most watched show on Max in its first of three episodes (and the second episode reached #3) . It is the tragic story of Amy Carlson and an alternative spirituality group with an eclectic mix of beliefs and practices with some questionable elements that have raised eyebrows. The theology of Love Has Won has been described as fluid, combining New Age spirituality, conspiracy theories, and elements from mainstream Abrahamic religions.

A striking collage entitled ‘The Galactic A-Team’ featuring modern western pop cultures celebrities from film and music and the ascended master version of the Count of Saint-Germain. In reading a few articles on the subject, a few more neo-theosophical elements could be glimpsed among the Christian, millenialist, QAnon and New Age elements. Among this rather baroque appearance, I happened to recognize a few discernible elements, and so I thought it would be feasible to attempt a brief analysis as it could give some insight into how theosophical influences figure in contemporary new religious movements.

My theory is that there is a specific passage from Blavatsky that has been noticed and has gradually morphed into something very different, but one can still trace the timeline back to the source, from 2023 to 1877. It begins with a passage from H. P. Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled I, ch. 1, p. 34, about the doctrine of cycles:

‘’Thus, all those great characters who tower like giants in the history of mankind, like Buddha-Siddartha, and Jesus, in the realm of spiritual, and Alexander the Macedonian and Napoleon the Great, in the realm of physical conquests, were but reflexed images of human types which had existed ten thousand years before, in the preceding decimillennium, reproduced by the mysterious powers controlling the destinies of our world.’’ (34)

William Q. Judge elaborates on this notion in The Ocean of Theosophy, chapter 4, 1893; (he further elaborates on the subject in his first essay on the Bhagava Gita, 1895:

‘’In these cycles we can include mixed characters who have had great influence on nations, such as King Arthur, Pharaoh, Moses, Charlemagne reincarnated as Napoleon Bonaparte, Clovis of France reborn as Emperor Frederic III of Germany, and Washington the first President of the United States of America where the root for the new race is being formed.’’

Without getting into the complexities of it, there is a notion of the esoteric role of prominent historical figures, who are involved in the cyclical repetition of archetypal patterns.

Moreover, Blavatsky occasionally makes disclosures of historical figures who are agents working for the lodge of Mahatmas, such as Saint-Germain, Cagliostro, and Anton Mesmer. They are considered as adepts, initiates or students of occultism of a lower degree. These are two different concepts, but are often inter-related.

With the writings of C.W. Leadbeater, which I designate as neo-theosophy, as I consider that there are considerable differences with Blavatsky’s writings, one could say that there is an elaboration of historical spiritual and occult figures, with details about their past lives attributed to contemporary members of the Theosophical Society. One could say that the degree of spiritual advancement gains more prominence as many members of the theosophical society become designated as initiates. Moroever, the higher spiritual beings in Blavatsky’s writings, such as Sanat Kumara, which were not described in detail, and not in anthropomorphic terms, are elaborately described as such in Leadbeater’s writings. To a certain extent, human adepts become more god-like and diving beings become more human-like. Communication with both seem to be portrayed as being more frequent and less difficult than in Blavatsky’s writings.

This tendency continues in the writings of Alice Bailey, with the following passages, for example:

“These are the things which the triangle at Yalta attempted to do. These they may not have consciously recognised as the work asked of them on account of their discipleship, but they automatically worked this way because they correctly sensed human need.” (The Externalisation of the Hierarchy, 3.7, 1957)

"Napoleon; Bismarck, the creator of a nation; Mussolini, the regenerator of his people; Hitler who lifted a distressed people upon his shoulders; Lenin, the idealist, Stalin and Franco are all expressions of the Shamballa force and of certain little understood energies." (The Externalisation of the Hierarchy, 2.3, 1957)

In these two passages, Bailey attributes the notion of archetypal historical actors and occult historical agents to contemporary political figures, sometimes conflating the two in one person. This esoteric engagement in contemporary political events of World War Two, had some controversial repercussions, beginning with a possible influence on the notorious ‘Morning of the Magicians’. Indeed, the history of theosophical responses to the Second World War would make for an interesting study. Current Bailey groups often reject such passages as errors of transmission.

This hyper-spiritualization tendency further continues with the Church Universal Triumphant and the notion of Ascended Masters. Where adepts where initially considered to be human beings with a physical body who could engage in astral projection, now they are portrayed as angelic beings solely functioning in a spiritual world. Moreover, there is an extensive elaboration with the introduction of an extended list of spiritual beings of different types, with a hierarchical categorization according to the concept of the seven rays, a concept presented in Blavatsky’s writings, but which did not have the specific detailed elaborations that were introduced by Leadbeater.

With the Benjamin Crème group, this type of spiritualized elaboration continues on a more concrete level with an extensive array of historical figures from throughout world history from different fields, from politics to science to art and some more modern western pop culture figures, including:

Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Dirk Bogarde, Marlon Brando, Jim Morrison, Georges Brassens, George Burns, Greta Garbo, Jerry Garcia, Frank Sinatra, Katharine Hepburn, Peter Sellers, and Eartha Kitt.

The two aspects of historical agents which were conflated with Alice Bailey and termed 'disciples' in Bailey’s writings, are now given the higher status of ‘initiates’.

A final step that would take us closer to the A-Team assembly can be gleaned from The Circle of Initiates: Past and Present,  Klaire D. Roy, 2016 where are listed along with Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley, we have Robin Williams and Walt Disney.

She claims to receive communications from the so-called DK, supposedly a disciple (chela) from Blavatsky’s days, later associated with Alice Bailey, although the main Alice Bailey groups have received the work negatively. The list that she presents is shorter, and more focused on more recent western pop culture celebrities.

Theosophical concepts are considered to be part of the UFO religion movement, and so these types of portrayals expanded into an extra-terrestrial framework as well. Millenialist and millenarian elements started to appear in all of these movements, which lead to  a certain influence on the QAnon conspiracy movement. Therefore I would describe the ‘Galactic A-Team’ as a more westernized pop culture version of the cast of initiates of the Benjamin Creme group, with added aspects from UFO religions and QAnon movements. 

A quote from Michael Barkun, referring to the Hatonn communications, describes a similar process:

'What we actually have is a highly derivative form of Theosophy— bits and pieces of what should really be termed neo-Theosophy, almost certainly lifted from sects that had themselves broken away from the larger Theosophical movement, such as the “I AM” Religious Activity in the 1930s and 1940s or the more recent Church Universal and Triumphant, and that have provided the Hatonn materials with a fragmentary and superficial Theosophical gloss.'

I’ve tried to give a brief outline of a rather complicated development, that I hope serves to show how a rather picturesque assemblage began from some more straightforward, albeit esoteric considerations of alternative histories. I wouldn’t call this a logical development, but rather the result of series of deviations, with each new series of teachings having been met with opposition or rejection from a previous group. But this is not all. I think that to give a more complete explanation, it would be good to give an overview of the spiritualist movement and present some considerations on how Blavatsky’s esoteric historical notions have developed along more rational lines. To be continued…

Part 2