Blavatsky's teenage years & Theosophy in New England, Boston trilogy, Shawn F. Higgins

After forty years of progress, the academic quality of theosophical history can reach a very high level of research. I would like to draw attention to a series of papers from a certain Shawn F. Higgins of the Harvard Divinity School, who has recently posted a series of writings on theosophical history of an exceptional level of quality and research, which feature, in certain cases, I think, some ground-breaking work on people and subjects that have had little coverage so far.

 

The 'Boston Trilogy'

 

Part 1 Ground-breaking piece on Walt Whitman & American theosophists

Sylvester Baxter Zuni Indians Frank Cushing, George David Ayers, Cyrus Field Willard, John Bridge, Arthur Griggs, William Q Judge 

The Nationalist Club Jan 7, 2024 Shawn F. Higgins

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/marginalia/2024/01/the-nationalist-club/

 

Part 2 of epic balzacian trilogy about Theosophy in Boston

Alcott & transcendentalists, many known & lesser-known Theosophists... Oscar Wilde Walt Whitman Mohini Chatterji  

“Even the Theosophists claim me. How much of me is going to be left for myself after all the claims of the radicals are satisfied?” Walt Whitman Traubel, Horace. With Walt Whitman in Camden: Vol. II. (July 16, 1888-October 31, 1888)

Holyrood Jan 13, 2024 Shawn F Higgins

https://patheos.com/blogs/marginalia/2024/01/the-midnight-visit-to-holyrood/

 

Part 3 - more great research   

William James Emerson Charcot Charles Rockwell Lanman Sarah Farmer Bull Sara Chapman Vivekananda Franz Hartmann Karl Kellner Dharmapala 

The Ivory Tower of Theosophy Shawn F. Higgins Feb 23, 2024

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/marginalia/2024/02/the-ivory-tower-of-theosophy/

 

By 1885, when Matilda Joslyn Gage joined the Rochester Branch, it was already filled with influential people. Maud Gage Baum and Lyman F. Baum joined the Society in Chicago, in 1892, under the tutelage of W.P. Phelon.

The Chicago Branch was chartered on November 27, 1884, by Stanley B. Sexton (President) William P. Phelon (Corresponding Secretary,) Mira Morse Phelon (wife of William Phelon and niece of Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph,) and newly-arrived immigrant, Jakob Bonggren.Maud L. Brainard was named Secretary.Other notable members of the Branch were: Rev. William H. Hoisington, and his wife, Lauretta Hoisington. Known as the “Blind Man Eloquent,” Hoisington, a famed lecturer on Egyptian history, joined the Society in 1876.

Oz: A Story Of Ancient Initiation November 24, 2024 by Shawn F. Higgins

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/marginalia/2024/11/oz-a-story-of-ancient-initiation/

 

Twain response to Bram Stoker: “I don’t care whether Annie Besant and William Jennings Bryan occupy lofts in his upper story,”

Mark Twain’s Side Quest For The Holy Grail Nov 29, 2024 Shawn F. Higgins

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/marginalia/2024/11/mark-twains-side-quest-for-the-holy-grail/

 

Blavatsky's Teenage Years

Detailed account of Blavatsky (1831-1891) 1847-1949, ages 16-18, many references, including random autobiographical digressions scattered in her own writings

The Ahkoond of Swat December 12, 2024. Shawn F. Higgins

https://www.patheos.com/.../2024/11/the-ahkoond-of-swat/

Blavatsky & Matilda Joslyn Gage

Matilda Jocelyn Gage has co-starred in 3 recent posts. Now I think that she's ready to star in her own post. Just transferring recent links from old posts. All still quite bloated. Sorry. Too much good material

 

Theosophist & major 19th c feminist MJG finally did get a bio. It's good to see that she's getting more notice recently. I read this - quite an eye-opening experience - gives a decent picture of what life was like as a social activist back then. Whatever one happens to think about her, her importance for American history is considerable, both mainstream and alternative. The book is short and basic, but a solid groundbreaking effort. A more comprehensive work could go three times longer and help give her the place in history that she deserves... Although her house has been an historical study center for twenty years and they've done good work, there's still gaps in research on her life, so plenty of work still needed to be done...

Born Criminal: Matilda Joslyn Gage,Radical Suffragist

Angelica Shirley Carpenter, 2018  

https://sdhspress.com/books/born-criminal  

http://angelicacarpenter.com

 

The “War Scrap Book” of Matilda Joslyn Gage

Witness to Rebellion

Edited by Peter Svenson - Foreword by Sally Roesch Wagner, 2018

presents and examines Gage's last significant work, a scrapbook that collects newspaper clippings about the Civil War from the 1860s onward.

https://lupress.cas.lehigh.edu/content/%E2%80%9Cwar-scrap-book%E2%80%9D-matilda-joslyn-gage

 

Angelica Carpenter’s picture book, The Voice of Liberty, pays homage to the ideological ancestors of those now marching in the streets for justice through the story of a protest staged by women’s rights activists at the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty. Illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham

 

The Voice of Liberty, Angelica Carpenter, Edwin Fotheringham, 2020

https://www.forewordreviews.com/articles/article/raising-their-voices-for-liberty/

 

Matilda Joslyn Gage’s Influence on L. Frank Baum – Zoom (Live)

Aug 25, 2021 OzCon’s Dina Massachi moderates a discussion with biographer Angelica Carpenter and Baum descendant Gita Morena on how radical suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage, mother-in-law to the creator and royal historian of Oz, influenced his life and work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwHJ9PoX8kM

 

The Radical Feminist Behind the Curtain

Jamie Jordan 3/29/2021 

There’s something magical about The Wizard of Oz; it isn’t the witchcraft or the wizardry, but that the story revolves around a girl who realizes her inner strength. For this, you can thank radical feminist Matilda Joslyn Gage.

https://msmagazine.com/2021/03/29/wizard-of-oz-matilda-joslyn-gage-suffrage-feminist/

 

Book of quotes, new edition- 1st 2016

Quoting Matilda: The Words and History of a Forgotten Suffragist

Susan Savion, Mar 17th, 2022

https://tertulia.com/book/quoting-matilda-the-words-and-history-of-a-forgotten-suffragist-susan-savion/9798886221404

 

Dr.Sally Roesch Wagner: Women's Rights and Texas Ruling,

The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation  

Podcast, 2022

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYIQKxo33lE

 

The Feminist of Oz

March 1, 2023 by Staff in Women at the Center

She was an ardent suffragist, abolitionist, and advocate for Indigenous rights, who held more radical views than many of her contemporaries. Gage’s writing explored the historical suppression of women’s power and intellect—including the history of the witch archetype.

https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/the-feminist-of-oz 

 

Matilda Joslyn Gage: The suffragist who defied the US government

Laura Byrne Paquet July 4, 2023 

Nice, lengthy illustrated article for 4th of July 

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20230703-matilda-joslyn-gage-the-suffragist-who-defied-the-us-government

 

The Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Influence on Women's Rights 

was presented by, Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner Executive Director of Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation. 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ1QqGYxiCc 

Visionary Women: The Haudenosaunee and the U.S. Women's Rights Movement

Jeanne Shenandoah and Sally Roesch Wagner  2006

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJivmVqhAY0

 

Central New York's Hidden Heroine Matilda Joslyn Gage & the Women's Suffrage Movement, March 13, 2024

Talk by Danielle Nagle, director of Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phlxaDXwxhs

 

Great article on Matilda Joslyn Gage's influence on Wizard of Oz & more

Zora E. L. Fenton, (2010). No Witch Is a Bad Witch: A Commentary on the Erasure of Matilda Joslyn Gage. SoCal Interdisciplinary Law Journal 20 (1), 21–38 

Whatever the relationship between Baum and his mother-in-law, Matilda Joslyn Gage, a staunch critic of the Nineteenth Century Christian witch hunts, was likely the inspiration for the empowering ―good witch in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Glinda, the good witch, let Dorothy know that she always had the ―power to return home.18 At the time leading up to and during Joslyn Gage‘s life, ―witches‖ too often were educated women who challenged existing power structures;this is precisely what JoslynGage did by challenging the church in its support of witch hunts. https://gould.usc.edu/why/students/orgs/ilj/assets/docs/20-1%20Fenton.pdf

 

 

In 2000, Gage's house was transformed into the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, in order to continue to research and inform about her work and legacy.

https://matildajoslyngage.org/home

Blavatsky, Vivekananda and the 1893 Parliament of the World's Religions, Chicago, part 1

Virchand Gandhi, Anagarika Dharmapala, Vivekananda , Nikola Tesla

This year, September 11 marked the 130th anniversary of the 1893 Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago, which was the first formal gathering of representatives of Eastern and Western spiritual traditions, the first organized interfaith gathering. The official delegation for the Theosophical Society consisted of President William Quan Judge; English orator Annie Besant; Professor G. N. Chakravarti representing Hinduism;  Anagarika Dharmapala representing Buddhism; Miss F. Henrietta Müller representing European Theosophists; and Mrs. Isabel Cooper-Oakley, representing Australia and New Zealand.

 

The event was part of the World's Columbian Exposition, a World's Fair held to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The exposition was an influential social and cultural event and had a profound effect on American architecture, the arts, American industrial optimism, and Chicago's image.

 

 

 

What Really Happened at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893?

IT'S HISTORY Jun 23, 2022

Nice 2o -minute documentary 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9XoMtxT0tU

 

A Theosophical Congress was held within the greater Parliament from September 15-17. All six of the credentialed Theosophical Society delegates to the Parliament spoke at the Congress, along with Dr. Jerome A. Anderson, Claude Falls Wright, Mrs. Mercie M. Thirds, Dr. J. D. Buck, and George E. Wright. 

 

A 200-page Proceedings Report was issued later that year, with full transcripts of all the lectures and speeches.

https://archive.org/details/theosophicalcong00theo/mode/2up

It was a rather momentous gathering of prominent theosophists, including Matilda Joslyn Gage, L. Frank Baum, (creator of the Wizard of Oz), and Thomas Edison.  A good account of this can be found in Finding Oz : How L. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story, 

Evan I. Schwartz Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009, pp. 200-250

Excellent article that touches upon the complex confluence of Columbian Exposition, Theosophy and Wizard of Oz

The secret life of Oz

Marina Warner July 27, 2008 

https://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/the-secret-life-of-oz-20080727-ge79ar.html

 

The Wizard in the White City

Scott|April 28th, 2021

https://worldsfairchicago1893.com/2021/04/28/the-wizard-in-the-white-city/

 

Gage attended 1893 Parliament of the World's Religions/World's Columbian Exposition and lobbied for The Woman's Building 

Columbian Exposition Books from 2018

https://worldsfairchicago1893.com/2019/01/05/2018-books/

 

Petition Signed by Thomas Edison for Sunday Openings at the World's Columbian Exposition

subjects of the petitions, assemblies, & speeches foreshadowed 20th century debates over social issues, including religion, gender, & race

https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/edison-petition

 

The event was an important landmark in American history and formed the setting of the opening chapters of Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day, 2006.

 

Part 2

Blavatsky, Theosophy & The Wizard of Oz, Frank L. Baum

Frank L. Baum's Wizard of Oz has ensconced itself into the American socio-cultural fabric in so many wondrous ways, becoming something of an essential modern American archetypal myth, with a message that has been reformulating itself with every new generation. 

 

The original 1900 novel is one of the best-known stories in American literature, and the Library of Congress has declared the work to be "America's greatest and best-loved homegrown fairytale."  The Classic 1939 MGM film with Judy Garland is one of few films on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register. There are several popular musicals, such as The Wiz, won 7 tony awards, film soundtrack, 1978, did well, a 1995 film staging with Jewel, Jackson Browne, Roger Daltrey, Natalie Cole and Ry Cooder, and Wicked, 2003, won 3 tony awards and a Grammy. A recent comic book adaptation by Eric Shanower and Skottie Young made NY Times bestseller list, with numerous other cultural adaptations, with books and films being the subject of many academic studies.

Lately, people have been less shy in noticing that theosophist and major feminism pioneer Matilda Jocelyn Gage, Baum's mother-in-law, helped inspire Baum's writing of the story, and that Baum himself was a theosophist and theosophical aspects have inspired the story. How this fact is to be understood in terms of what theosophy means to American culture is an idea that is beginning to become more of a topic of historical reflection.

 

Baum bio that does not shy away from feminist, theosophical and spiritual elements

Finding Oz: How L. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story

Evan I. Schwartz Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009

Finding Oz 

 

FINDING OZ: discover the inspirations for THE WIZARD OF OZ Evan I. Schwartz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZJ7hoJauPY

PBS American Experience 2021 Frank L. Baum documentary

‘American Oz’: L. Frank Baum doc traces ‘Wizard of Oz,’ ‘Wicked’ roots to author’s formative Chicago years

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt19cuPSvc0

https://www.pbs.org/video/extended-trailer-american-oz/

 

Amazing story that shows how deeply the story is ingrained in the American social fabric, no effort spared to make the Red Slippers into a religious icon, with an elaborate ritualistic pilgrimage and mythography worthy of the most sacred holy relic.

Dorothy’s stolen ruby slippers: a bizarre tale of obsession, small-town gossip and a police hunt that took 13 years When the famous ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz were stolen from a museum in a small Minnesota town, it set off more than a decade of investigations, rumours, false leads, wild goose chases ... and eventually a big break.

Elizabeth Evitts DickinsonThe Washington Post Magazine Sun., May 19, 2019

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2019/05/19/dorothys-stolen-ruby-slippers-a-bizarre-tale-of-obsession-small-town-gossip-and-a-police-hunt-that-took-13-years.html

 

Washington D.C. Museum Opens First Permanent Exhibition For Pop Culture — Where To See Dorothy’s Red Slippers, Muhammad Ali’s Robe, And More

Greg Robertson Jan.23.2023

https://www.travelawaits.com/2851753/national-museum-of-american-history-entertainment-nation-pop-culture-exhibit/

 

How Wizard of Oz ruby slippers became ultimate Hollywood symbol 

Maureen Lee Lenker Aug 25,2019 

https://ew.com/movies/2019/08/25/wizard-of-oz-ruby-slippers-ultimate-hollywood-symbol/ 

 

Opinion: Lumet’s ‘The Wiz’ is still a trailblazing film in Black culture

Trinity Bland and Ryan Hardison February 25, 2021

The film is foremost a story of racial liberation paired with Afrofuturism elements and perfectly blends with the combination of science fiction, fantasy, magical realism and ancient African tradition that dares to criticize historical events or envisions a Black future. Its impact is evident in current cinema and has prompted recent groundbreaking films as Get Out and Black Panther 

https://thedailyaztec.com/104336/opinion/opinion-lumets-the-wiz-is-still-a-trailblazing-film-in-black-culture/

 

 

Good critical review of Oz movie that discusses feminist and theosophical aspects:

On the 100th Anniversary of the Woman’s Suffrage March on Washington, Disney’s “Oz, the Great and Powerful” Sets the Women’s Movement back beyond a century.

March 11, 2013 

It comes as no surprise, then that Gage was also a Theosophist. The primary belief of brotherhood and equality in Theosophical tenets would surely have drawn her to this philosophy. These beliefs would also inform her work opposing the political power of the Christian church, whose oppression she had fought against in both her work as an abolitionist and suffragist. Theosophy was brought to the United States by Helen P. Blavatsky who introduced eastern philosophical ideas of Buddhism and Hinduism to the West.

https://extremehistoryproject.org/tag/theosophy/

 

This Feminist Icon May Have Partially Inspired 'The Wizard Of Oz'

Charlotte Ahlin June 21, 2018 

Picking up the book today, it doesn't exactly read like a cutting edge feminist manifesto. We can thank L. Frank Baum, though, at least in part, for several generations of fierce, female protagonists in fiction. We can thank him for planting the seed of a witch who was powerful and magical without being evil in the public consciousness. And we can hope that Matilda Joslyn Gage, who never lived to see the Oz books published, would have been (begrudgingly) proud.

https://www.bustle.com/p/the-wizard-of-oz-book-by-l-frank-baum-actually-has-a-fascinating-feminist-origin-9326087

 

For all things Oz, consult The Daily Ozmopolitan

https://ozmapolitan.wordpress.com

 

If you really wish to go all the way down the yellow brick road, check out The Oz VLog https://instagram.com/theozvlog/