Blavatsky Book Review: Troubled Emissaries - Brett Forray

After Ernest Pelletier’s ambitious 2003 book The Judge Case, we have another ambitious account of this cause célèbre: Troubled Emissaries: How H.P. Blavatsky’s Successors Transformed the Theosophical Society from 1891 to 1895. Brett Forray.  Alexandria West, 2016. This hefty 554-page hardcover volume is very dense and academic packing in a lot of information with over a hundred pages of endnotes, but is nonetheless quite focused, mainly covering a short five-year period that saw simmering tensions erupt into a full-blown crisis that seriously changed the dynamics of the theosophical movement at the turn of the 19^th century.

Chapter 1 Early Dynamics within the Theosophical Society (pp. 3-20) –  is an introductory section examining  mainly the question of the Mahatma letters and the controversies that they have generated up to the present time in various organisations.

Chapter 2- The successors (21-60) gives brief bios of Judge and Besant and covers the period following  the death of Theosopohical Society co-founder and spiritual guide, Helena Blavatsky in 1891, until 1893, focusing on Judge, co-founder and International president Henry Steel Olcott and famous social activist and recent member Annie Besant’s evolving relationships with each other. It deals with and the re-organisation of the Esoteric Section, co-headed by Judge and Besant and includes a misunderstood incident involving a rumor that Olcott was attempting to administer poison.

Chapter 3 – The Master’s Seal (61-90) More events from 1891-93 centered around a mysterious seal mark for documents and an incident where Olcott resigned his presidency but later changed his mind due to a Mahatmic directive.

Chapter 4 – New Friends and Old Ennemies (91-166) This could be considered the central chapter, as it deftly tackles the fundamental events in the allegations against Judge. We are introduced to notorious figures such as Walter Old, Henry Edge, Gyanendra Chakravarti, Judge Khandavala. The TS participation at the World Parliament for Religions is covered, ending with the resolution of the first inquiry where Olcott importantly acknowledged that the inquiry would involve accepting the existence of the Mahatmas and thus implying that belief in the Mahatmas is an official society position, which would be incompatible with the policy of freedom of belief and anti-dogmatism. There is an interesting account of Besant’s relation with the London Lodge lead by A. P. Sinnett in 1994 that indicates the beginnings of ‘’Neo-Theosophy’’ a so-called style of Theosophy that Besant would champion, in collaboration with C.W. Leadbeater (p. 143).

Chapter 5 – The Clash of Certainty (167-242) Taking us through the 1993-95 period, it covers Walter Old’s epic betrayal in giving documents to F. Edmund Garrett, who published an exposé in the Westminster Gazette entitled ‘’Isis Very Much Unveiled’’, later issued as a pamphlet that went through several printings. Judge’s controversial ‘’By Master’s Directive’’ esoteric section document is also discussed.

Chapter 6 – The End of All of Our Troubles (243-286) Focusing on the year 1895. The Garrett and Judge pieces hit the Theosophical movement like bombshells, resulting in a dizzying proliferation of pamphlets commenting on the situation. Part of the outcome of this affair was the intensification of underlying issues, tensions and problems that had been simmering in the background and so a full blown crisis of the general role and position of the Theosophical society and an international level was taking place, with a lot of interesting debates, which are covered in this chapter including the East versus West debate sparked by the notorious Prayag letter. The actual separation of the American section, where they voted to declare autonomous governance free from international control and the subsequent cancelling of their charter by Olcott is covered and the untimely passage of Judge shortly thereafter, in the spring of 1896.

Chapter 7 -  Forming a Universal Brotherhood (343-354) Covers the aftermath of Judge’s passing with election of Katherine Tingley to the head of the American section followed by her international ‘’Crusade’’ and the founding of the Point Loma community.

Chapter 8- The Future of Annie Besant and William Q Judge (343-354) This short epilogue raises many interesting questions, and nicely summarizes the debates and accounts that occurred regarding the Judge case over the years.

Appendices: There are three interesting short pieces: 1-The Early History of the TS; 2-How the Mahatma Letters were Written; 3- General Report of the 1888 convention of the TS (a document that contained important administrative amendments). A detailed index is included and the book is of excellent printing quality.

The quality of academic research is impressive in its detail and accuracy, with in-depth use of Theosophical literature and academic studies. Not only are blow-by-blow events from the 1891-1895 period covered, but all of the underlying issues are discussed as well, such as the relationship between Eastern and Western cultures, especially India, the importance of Blavatsky in the society, the legitimacy of Judge as an occultist, the role of Mahatmas, the role of temporal versus esoteric governance, the role of the international leadership at Adyar, and the emergence of a neo-theosophy tendency.

Many interesting obscure recollections, anecdotes, opinions, speculations, critiques and observations are included. Of merit as well is the critical, skeptical stance taken aiming at a neutral and objective analysis. Different sides of accounts are discussed and evaluated. Assertions and statements by the parties of the time are questioned, contradictory testimonies noted, making this a thorough and balanced account of much of the early TS history. What can we conclude from all of this? Is the Judge case finally resolved? On the contrary, this study brings little new to the story (and does not claim to attempt to do so) but rather proposes a tight summary of the history of the case and then points out the need for new perspectives and deeper investigation, including a further examination of unpublished internal documents.

In terms of critiques, because the affair was closely linked to ongoing tensions and complex issues related the Theosophical Societies international governance and the role of the Mahatmas since Blavatsky's passing, it is actually difficult to get a clear view of what the case is about. Judge formal published replies, to my knowledge, remain the documents that give the clearest explanation of the events and so can be considered fundamental; however,  these specific documents seem to have comparatively little coverage (see http://www.phx-ult-lodge.org/two_replies.htm). Moreover, regardless of Judge’s guilt or innocence, it seems plain that, like Blavatsky on several occasions, he was the victim of certain illicit machinations, mainly forged letters, and it seems that a detailed investigation of this question has never really been undertaken. Sadly, it seems that few original documents in relation to alledged forgeries of Mahatma letters seem to have survived, or in the case of the Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett in the British Museum, are deemed too fragile to undergo close technical examination.

With the coverage of Katherine Tingley, although treated with a solid level of accuracy and scholarship, there seems to be a greater level of charity and appreciation towards her role in the case. For example, the existing accounts of the role of Tingley in last year of Judge’s life and the Mahatma/Blavatsky letters associated with her can be said to range  from minimal to maximal, Forray opts to posit a maximal influence, and  in that sense this study can perhaps be considered a Point Loma-friendly account. Nonetheless, the works remains a strong example of quality academic scholarship, which is heartening, since a certain portion of academic Theosophical historical studies can be marred by serious inaccuracies and inconsistencies, although the situation is improving.

Still, as this study amply demonstrates, the issues are not just about Judge and real or bogus Mahatma letters, they involve fundamental issues that are still relevant to the TS, hence this work can be useful in healing the wounds and resolving the issues, thus helping the TS to face the future challenges that lie ahead with better insight and freedom. In certain way, with the Pelletier study (The Judge Case) we have a ULT  perspective, with the Forray study we have a Point Loma / Pasadena perspective, and the Adyar perspective still exists as originally spelled out by Besant and Olcott (although Judge has been given more credit from Adyar in recent times). Therefore we have the three main accounts of the affair clearly on the table, making it easier to review the case in a fresh light, and bring in new perspectives in order to seek resolution and reconciliation.

New Book on the History of Theosophical Society post-Blavatsky

September 19, 2016 Frater Lux Ad Mundi 

 http://zeroequalstwo.net/8785-2/

Troubled Emissaries

July 26, 2017 Paul Johnson

http://adepts.light.org/2017/07/26/2127/

http://www.alexandriawest.org/

https://csustan.academia.edu/BrettForray

Blavatsky and America

The Lost City of Lemuria, and Other  Reasons I Hate Reading Pynchon  
Nina St-Pierre – March 14 2019

Lemuria was pure hypothesis, a 19th-century paleontologist’s explanation for how lemurs crossed from Madagascar into India. The discovery of modern plate tectonics put the theory to bed, but Lemuria’s legend has persisted for almost 200 years. After a brief period of reclamation by Tamil nationalists, who called the hypothetical continent Kumari Kandam, the charge of Lemuria as a peak civilization lost to sea was taken up by occultists and theosophists.

Like a game of telephone, authors built on the story of Lemuria. Madame Blavatsky’s esoteric cosmology posited the Lemurians as a “root race” in human evolution. Australian professor Robert Dixon theorized that Lemuria was a stand in for post-colonial British malaise. Finally, and this is what interested Pynchon, Lemuria was a continent sunken at vague coordinates in the Pacific Ocean. And then the Lemurians came to California.

Maybe the simple truth is that I can’t read Pynchon because I, too, want to keep believing. I want to believe that someone, somewhere, can explain in concrete terms the seekers of lost cities, the not-of-this-earth, those leaving behind broken histories and families, searching for a way to disappear and, in turn, find themselves.

https://electricliterature.com/the-lost-city-of-lemuria-and-other-reasons-i-hate-reading-pynchon/

Blavatsky, Emerson and the Tree of Knowledge

Lewis Connelly - 8 April 2019

I would identify the author of this movement to be Madame Blavatsky, and I would identify her forerunner to be our very own Ralph Waldo Emerson. Moving from Emerson to Blavatsky – contemporaries of one another - there is undeniably, in my opinion, a thick line of influence….Madame Blavatsky then was at the helm of esotericism or occultism, or modern spirituality’s sudden rise to prominence. Theosophists themselves speculate that the reason for this sudden rise was on account of the hidden masters themselves, who perhaps convened in some clandestine fashion to orchestrate the emergence of this ancient truth, to aid humanity in our ongoing spiritual betterment. And who knows? I’m obviously a sceptic when it come to this stuff, but here I am talking about it, so, make of that what you will. It does resonate on some level as meaningful to me.

https://www.lewisconnolly.com/post/2019/4/8/blavatsky-emerson-and-the-tree-of-knowledge

An Occult Art History of the American West

Fiffy Guyver – 12 September 2019

During the 19th century, the American frontier moved ever-westward. The so-called new territories quickly became rich sites for innovative forms of Western spirituality, which operated outside of organized religion. One such practice, Theosophy – established in New York in 1875 by occultist Helena P. Blavatsky – proved influential in the development of abstract painting and Western modernism more broadly. A new book, titled Enchanted Modernities: Theosophy, the Arts and the American West (2019), charts the religious movement’s influence on art history.

In 1938, in the small town of Taos, New Mexico, a number of artists formed the Transcendental Painting Group. Inspired by occult teachings, including theosophical literature, they conducted experiments in abstraction….One member of the group, Agnes Pelton, moved to the California desert in 1932, where she began to create surreal, luminous paintings. Among Pelton’s influences was Blavatsky’s core text, The Key to Theosophy (1889), and her works are suffused with occult symbolism.

he German artist, animator and filmmaker Oskar Fischinger is perhaps best-known for his pioneering contributions to abstract cinema: he collaborated with Fritz Lang on his 1929 film Woman in the Moon and influenced Walt Disney’s Fantasia (1940). Although not a member of the Transcendental Painting Group, Fischinger was particularly influenced by Theosophical ideas after moving to Hollywood in 1936.

https://frieze.com/article/occult-art-history-american-west

Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist 
Mar 13–June 28, 2020  
https://whitney.org/exhibitions/agnes-pelton

Recent Blavatsky Projects from Daniel J. Caldwell

The indefatigable Daniel J. Caldwell has updated the Blavatsky Archives page recently and has included some interesting new publications and online documents, of which a sampling below (see http://blavatskyarchives.com ):

Theosophy: Divine Wisdom from Long Sealed Ancient Fountains

A comprehensive introduction to the basic teachings of Theosophy, culled from the major writings of H.P. Blavatsky, with William Q. Judge and others.

Hardcover, 490 Pages

http://www.lulu.com/shop/hp-blavatsky/theosophy-divine-wisdom-from-long-sealed-ancient-fountains/hardcover/product-24079757.html

Esoteric Buddhism

By A.P. Sinnett

Paperback, 260 Pages

In the early 1880s A.P. Sinnett corresponded with the Mahatmas Koot Hoomi and Morya. In these letters the Masters gave Sinnett the basic ideas of Theosophy on the Occult Constitution of Man; the Planetary Chain; the World Periods; Life after death in Devachan and Kama Loka; the Progress of Humanity; Buddha; Nirvana and the Universe. Mr. Sinnett wrote ESOTERIC BUDDHISM based on his understanding of these teachings. This Theosophical classic was the first simple exposition of Theosophy in modern times.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/ap-sinnett/esoteric-buddhism/paperback/product-23263109.html

Mary Unveiled: A.P. Sinnett and Maude Boyle-Travers

A monograph on a little-known but important period of early Theosophy.

http://blavatskyarchives.com/caldwell_mary_unveiled_unabridged_.pdf

THE THEOSOPHICAL GLOSSARY & Related Material: A Chronology;

A compilation of all the information concerning the writing of the Theosophical Glossary.

http://blavatskyarchives.com/Caldwell_Chronology_Theosophical_Glossary.pdf

Master Serapis

Article from The Theosophist Vol. 140.8, May 2019

http://blavatskyarchives.com/caldwell_master_serapis.pdf

Blavatsky Book Review: The Judge Case - Ernest Pelletier

Published in 2004, this large hardcover volume generated a fair share of commentary and debate in the Theosophical community. The first section is a chronology which is an amazingly detailed bibliography of many very obscure theosophical publications and newspaper articles with brief descriptions and snippets, not just during Judge’s lifetime but with related accounts up until 2003. At 310 pages, this alone is a remarkably well-researched document.

For those who do not have the patience to wade through all of that material, the second section is a 130-page account of the events of the Judge case in 24 chapters, it forms what can be considered the central piece of the work. It is a well-written narrative that takes into account a lot of the lesser-known figures in the story, such as Richard Harte and Judge Khandalavala. One can say that it is faithful to Judge’s own take on the affairs and much research and speculation is given to support his position. Of note for its distinctiveness is chapter 17, titled ‘’Judge’s Initiation’’  which considers that Judge must have been through some sort of process of initiation during his trip to India in 1884. The Judge Case was a rather complex affair, with many underlying issues, and Pelletier does a good job at considering all of the unfortunate series of events that led up to that crisis.

That is not all – there is an entire second section, labelled ‘’Part 2’’, which contains a series of ten lengthy appendices which comprise another 500 pages, making for a 1000-page volume. Here we are given reproductions of the many pamphlets, articles and official documents that the affair generated (Olcott and Judge were lawyers by profession, after all). You also get all the material concerning the notorious Prayag letter debate, a lengthy and lively correspondence of Judge with Ernest Hargrove,  reproductions of two handwritten drafts of two of Judge’s final official letters, and much more. Moreover, there are two illustration sections, which reproduce various interesting items, mainly photographs of the prominent theosophists of the period.

It is more than just an account of the Judge affair, it practically covers much of the history of the Theosophical Society in the 19^th century; it is a treasure trove of obscure documents and a gold mine for theosophical historians. This book is sure to be a valuable source book for theosophical enquirers for a long time to come.

Resources:

https://www.theosophycanada.com/the-judge-case.php

Blavatsky & Philo of Alexandria

HPB, in the glossary of the Key to Theosophy, apparently consulting a bio on Philo, considers his writings to be of a kabbalistic nature -

"Philo-Judaeus. A Hellenized Jew of Alexandria, a famous historian and philosopher of the first century, born about the year 30 B. C., and died between the years 45 and 50 A. D. Philo's symbolism of the Bible is very remarkable. The animals, birds, reptiles, trees, and places mentioned in it are all, it is said, "allegories of conditions of the soul, of faculties, dispositions, or passions; the useful plants were allegories of virtues, the noxious of the affections of the unwise and so on through the mineral kingdom; through heaven, earth and stars; through fountains and rivers, fields and dwellings; through metals, substances, arms, clothes, ornaments, furniture, the body and its parts, the sexes, and our outward condition." (Dict. Christ. Biog.) All of which would strongly corroborate the idea that Philo was acquainted with the ancient Kabbala."

Although the explanations given are brief and from indirect sources (Smith and Wace’s Dictionary of Christian Biography) , the idea that Philo was aware of a secret Kabbalistic doctrine is a plausible one from an esoteric or mystic perspective. From an academic perspective, there has been much resistance. Adolphe Franck's The Kabbalah, a work Blavatsky was aware of, dismisses the idea.  The main problem is that Philo is very sparing in referring to Jewish tradition outside of the Greek Pentateuch, so it is by no means obvious from his writings that he even knew Hebrew or Aramaic. Happily, things are changing, the theory was put forth in the 1950s and is currently being revived with some interesting research:

Naomi G. Cohen, Philo’s Cher. 40–52, Zohar III 31a,
and BT Hag. 16a, Journal of jewish studies, vol. lvii, no. 2, autumn 2006

"It has been shown that Philo has culled this esoteric tradition from a commentary identified by him as ‘Jeremiah’, since as pointed out above, while Philo names Jeremiah in II Cher. §49, what he is obviously quoting is an esoteric commentary on the prophetic verse found in the Book of Jeremiah, for in the same section he also identifies the esoteric exegesis of the Pentateuch as belonging to Moses.The passage from the Zohar contains similar ideas, projects similar images, and uses the same biblical text, in the form found in the Septuagint and in Philo, but not in the MT, and BT Hagiga 16a contains desiccated ‘bare bones’ of this construct, divested of any discernable theosophical dimension.

Thus the very same midrashic building blocks which stem from the Septuagint reading of Jer. 3:4 appear in Philo and in the Zohar, and to some extent in BT Hagigah 16a as well. The completely different form that the tradition takes in these very different sources is apparently the result of their having been transplanted into very different cultural soils and climates. This supports the thesis that a pool of esoteric Midrash common to the Hebrew/Aramaic tradition and the Greco-Jewish ‘world’ existed in the days of the Second Temple—in the days of Philo who was more or less contemporary with Hillel and Shammai.

Further, since as we have seen, this specific tradition must have originated in Hellenistic Jewish circles for whom the Holy Scripture was the Septuagint, it also shows that contributions to this midrashic pool came not only from sources that originated in the Hebrew/Aramaic speaking communities, but that this was at least sometimes a two way street.59 And finally, it also lends support for the hypothesis, which, after a half-century of almost total eclipse, in recent years is gaining a more and more serious hearing in  scholarly circles, that some very early esoteric traditions are in fact embedded in the Zohar."

Blavatsky and the Neoplatonic Revival

Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie

Jay Bregman places Theosophists Thomas Moore Johnson (1851-1919) and AlexanderWilder's (1823-1909) platonic adventure as part of the American transcendentalist current begun by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882),(1) which can be considered the first significant American philosophical school of thought. Sadly, the passing of Johnson and Wilder spelled the end of this idealistic school, fading out in the wave of materialist, technological, empirical impulses of the twentieth century. However, it is not to say that their work did not bear any fruits. In their time, Plato's Republic was an obscure rarity. Today, translations of this work have become something of a cottage industry, and is studied in a dizzying array of college courses all over the world. In this post, I would like to attempt a kind of rough charcoal sketch of the aftermath of their bold Platonic experiment, which saw the surprising revival of Neoplatonic studies in academia, which has influenced further growth in more alternative circles as well.

A short digression before beginning: despite the extensive amount of study Neoplatonism has garnered in the last 100 years, I think that it is a philosophy that remains undervalued and misunderstood, considering that it was a major part of the intellectual worldview in the West and the Middle East for at least a thousand years (mainly in the Aristotelian form known as the ‘Ammonian synthesis’, (after Ammonius Hermiae (c. 440 – c. 520), a philosopher who has been largely forgotten, but who is actually extremely influential in the history of philosophy) the last major expression in the west being with the Cambridge Platonists like Ralph Cudworth (1617 –1688). The greatest thinkers of the Medieval period in the Christian, Islamic and Jewish worlds, Aquinas (1225–1274),  Avicenna (980-1037), and Maimonides (1135-1204), were all thoroughly steeped in Neoplatonic philosophy (3). The main problem, as I see it, that there is a prevalent tendency for modern historians to interpret that philosophers of that period with a modern form of Aristotelianism that is more in tune with the sceptical, empirical, and rationalistic tendencies of modernism, an approach to Aristotelian thought that has no historical precedence, and as Lloyd Gerson argues (see Aristotle and Other Platonists,  Cornell University Press; 2006), is not an accurate presentation of Aristotle’s thought, but a rather materialistic one. Although this approach dominated the academic world from roughly 1930-1985, fortunately there are signs that things are changing as post-modern perspectives being to take hold.

In a letter to GRS Mead (1863-1933), Thomas Moore Johnson expressed a wildly ambitious desire to translate the entirety of the Enneads of Plotinus (2).  He did not get very far, but his idea proved to be prescient, because it was precisely a complete modern translation of Plotinus in English (and French) that proved to be the necessary catalyst for the revival in interest in Neoplatonism. It did not take long for two more intrepid mavericks to romantically take up the challenge, the Irishman Stephen Mackenna (1872 –1934)(1917-1930 edition) and  the Scott-born American Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie (1871-1940) (1918 edition).  
 

Soon after, the academic world began to pay more attention to Plotinus. The academic world was already in the process of a major re-evaluation of Greek philosophy, spear-headed in Germany with the Bibliotheca Teubneriana extensive series of ancient greek texts.  In the English world, Arthur Hilary Armstrong, (1909 –1997) was a pioneer and Émile Bréhier (1876-1952) produced an excellent complete French translation (1924–1938). By the 1960s, Plotinus broke a kind of academic embargo on Neoplatonic philosophers  with his inclusion in the Cambridge Loeb Classical Library (A. H. Armstrong, Enneads, 1966-1988) and in the French world, a comparable translation by Paul Henry and Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer appeared (1951-1973), capping a considerable breakthrough that saw his status rise from an obscure excentric footnote in the history of philosophy to a figure regularly considered to be the greatest philosopher between Aristotle and Aquinas.

Moreover, Wayne Hankey argues how neoplatonism plays an important role in contemporary French philosophy, beginning with Bergson and Heidegger:

 

In 1959 Hadot published a criticism of Heidegger‘s treatment of Platonism in the course of judging both that Heidegger is ―the prophet of this end of Platonism, which is, at the same time, the end of the world‖ and that ―one is able to be tempted to interpret the thought of Heidegger as a sort of néo-platonisme. Pierre Aubenque‘s―Plotin et le dépassement de l‘ontologie grecque classique, was published in 1971. It sets up the question about the alternative metaphysics which might derive from Neoplatonism in the Heideggerian terms which have dominated French philosophy in the last two-fifths of the twentieth century. 

By either, or both, of these ways Plotinian thought might escape Heidegger‘s critique of onto-theology. Aubenque also suggests how Neoplatonism relates to a Derridean deconstruction of ontology: ‘’Fundamental Ontology or ―overcoming metaphysics: this alternative, which the contemporary project of a ―destruction or better of a ―deconstruction of the pseudo-evidences of classical ontology confronts anew, finds its exact prefiguration in Neoplatonism.’’ (Neoplatonism and Contemporary French Philosophy Dionysius 23 (2005): 161 - 190.)

Furthermore, Plotinus has even worked his way into mainstream French bookstores, thanks mainly to the "Les Écrits de Plotin", Les Éditions du Cerf, Paris, which publishes individual treatises in French translation, started by Pierre Hadot. As discussed previously, a renewed interest in Iamblichus (c. AD 245 – c. 325) would follow, and even a much-shunned philosopher like Proclus (412 –485 AD), has been the object of a renewed interest in study since the mid-1980s. Moreover, Platonism has continued to exist in a vital way in certain  individual and collective efforts. For example, Manly P. Hall,  David Fideler, with his Phanes Press and Alexandria journal, Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D , the thriving Prometheus Trust and the International Society for NeoplatonicStudies.   It is therefore safe to say that there has not been this much interest in Neoplatonism since the days of Ralph Cudworth and the Cambridge Platonists.

 
(1) For a history of American Transcendentalism see: Bregman J. (2009) Proclus Americanus. In: Vassilopoulou P., Clark S.R.L. (eds) Late Antique Epistemology. Palgrave Macmillan, London 

(2) Bowen, Patrick D. and K. Paul Johnson, eds. Letters to the Sage: Selected Correspondence of Thomas Moore Johnson Volume One: The Esotericists. Forest Grove, OR: The Typhon Press, 2016.

(3) See Christian Platonists and Platonizing Christians in History:  http://www.john-uebersax.com/plato/cp.htm 

See also:

The Brothers Guthrie: Pagan Christianity of the Early 20th Century

https://newtopiamagazine.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/the-brothers-guthrie-pagan-christianity-of-the-early-20th-century/

 

Interview with Tim Addey, co-founder and chair of The Prometheus Trust, a UK charity that supports scholarship in the Platonic tradition.

http://www.thethinkersgarden.com/2015/01/fantast-focus-tim-addey-prometheus-trust/

Blavatsky and the Iamblichus Revival

In Letters to the Sage, vol. 2, a regular recurrent topic in Alexander Wilder’s letters to T.M. Johnson is his pioneering work on translating Iamblichus’ On the Mysteries, which he spent several decades working on. Both Blavatsky and Olcott were supportive of this work, although he ultimately opted for another publisher when the work was assembled in book form, but it was serialized in The Theosophist magazine, beginning with the July, 1881 issue). The theosophy movement still continued to support the work, with Wizards Bookshelf offering a reprint of the Thomas Taylor translation in the 1980s.

 

Posterity has shown that these early theosophical efforts of reviving obscure neoplatonic works were important, considering the major rediscovery of the importance of Iamblichus in the history of western ideas. In the English language, it was the 1973 publication of John Dillon’s The Fragments of Iamblichus that brought to light the major influence of Iamblichus in determining the course of western philosophy for the medieval and early modern period. The fact that he is one of the most influential western thinkers of all time had been largely occluded due mainly to the loss of much of his writings and the rise of modern materialism. Since then, there has been a serious revival of interest in his work, a recent sample is Iamblichus and the Foundations of Late Platonism, Brill, 2012. https://brill.com/view/title/21497 .

 

To give an idea of the current position of Iamblichus in the academic world, below are some extracts from John Bussanich’s “New Editions of Iamblichus: A Review Essay,” Ancient Philosophy 25.2 (2005): 478-494. https://www.academia.edu/247793/New_Editions_of_Iamblichus

 

Since he lived in Apamea in southeastern Turkey, it is not surprising that of all the Platonists in late antiquity it was Iamblichus who looked to the East most creatively and sought to harmonize its wisdom traditions with those of archaic and classical Greece. Like its aptly-named sister-city Zeugma, to which it was connected by a bridge over the Euphrates, Apamea was the home of that elusive second century CE Pythagorean-Platonist Numenius and as well as the refuge of Amelius (ca. 270 CE), a key disciple of Plotinus, and later of Iamblichus (born in Syria), who settled there in his mature years after long postings in Egypt and Italy. As a crossroads for caravans running East and West Apamea was a fitting base of operations for these Platonists who mixed Plato and Pythagorean oral traditions with the Oriental wisdom of the Brahmins, Magi, Egyptians, and Chaldaeans.

 

What is certain is that in the first half of the twentieth century Iamblichus’ immersion in Hermetic and Chaldaean wisdom and magic provoked antipathy from many classical scholars and ancient philosophers. These two masterly editions and commentaries make an essential contribution to the revaluation of Iamblichus’ thought which has been underway for a generation.

 

They join the editions of his major writings by Des Places and of the fragments of his commentaries on Plato and Aristotle by Dillon and Larsen and these fundamental studies of his thought: Carlos Steel, The Changing Self: A Study on the Soul in Later Neoplatonism: Iamblichus, Damascius and Priscianus (1978); John Finamore, Iamblichus and the Theory of the Vehicle of the Soul (1985); Garth Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes (1986); Dominic O’Meara, Pythagoras Revived: Mathematics and Philosophy in Late Antiquity (1989); Beate Nasemann, Theurgie und Philosophie in Iamblichus de mysteriis (1991); Greg Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus (1995); Emma Clarke, Iamblichus De Mysteriis: A Manifesto of the Miraculous (2001); and important articles by H.D. Saffrey, P. Athanassiadi, John Finamore, John Dillon and others.

 

With the changes in intellectual fashions marked by the explosion of scholarship on late antiquity in the past fifty years, including Neoplatonism, it is useful to recognize to what extent twentieth-century attitudes towards Iamblichus, especially among English-language scholars, are rooted in the seminal work of E.R. Dodds, who both perpetuated some of the extreme rationalist biases of earlier European scholarship against the religious dimension of his thought but who also recognized the Syrian’s philosophical genius. The religious and philosophical aspects of Iamblichus’ thought, which certainly would not have been recognized by its author as separate or distinct, sit uncomfortably side by side in Dodds’ interpretive perspective.

 

In his great 1933 edition of Proclus’ Elements of Theology he observed that ‘the historical importance of Iamblichus has hardly been sufficiently recognized’ because his primary metaphysical writings have been lost and his views have had to be reconstructed from fragments and from what Dodds called ‘the semi-philosophical’ De Mysteriis (1933, xix). Dodds’s schizophrenic image of Iamblichus comes into focus in the very next sentence: ‘Mystagogue and thaumaturgist though he was, and in intellectual quality immeasurably inferior to a Posidonius or a Plotinus, his contribution to the final shaping of Neoplatonism is scarely less than theirs’ (xix). How could an inferior intellect determine the character of Neoplatonism, a tradition for which Dodds had great respect? And, more disturbingly, how could a magician or mystagogue be a creative ‘philosophical’ thinker?

 

Dodds’s grand vision of late antique thought in decline is motivated in part by his sense of the gradual defeat of Hellenic rationalism by Oriental irrationalism, a war whose earlier battles in archaic and classical Greece were charted, with a good deal of Freudian cartography, in that classic of mid-century scholarship The Greeks and the Irrational (1951).

 

Even as Iamblichus scholarship has become more comprehensive and self-critical, it has continued to be shaped consciously and unconsciously by Dodds’s pathbreaking work, sometimes confirming his inspired judgments and sometimes replicating his biases in milder form.

 

In 1910 Praechter dubbed him the ‘Neoplatonic Chrysippus’, the second founder of the Neoplatonic school (114, cited by Dodds), which is appropriate for someone who was both synthesizer and innovator.

 

Iamblichus systematized the Platonism he inherited both methodologically and philosophically. In the first respect he articulated an educational curriculum, which may have begun with the Pythagorean curriculum before proceeding to the study of Aristotelian and then Platonic texts (DA 6-7).

 

Iamblichus’ major surviving work in religious thought is the De Mysteriis, an abbreviation of the title coined by Ficino in the fifteenth century: De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum, Chaldaeorum, Assyriorum. As Athanassiadi has argued (1995, 246) this title may be less extravagant than it is usually thought to be if Iamblichus’ knowledge of Hermetic doctrine and Egyptian religion generally is given its due. The actual title is ‘The Master Abamôn’s Response to Porphyry’s Letter to Anebo, and the solutions to the difficulties contained in it’.

 

The DM’s combination of oriential wisdom with Platonic philosophy alarmed earlier scholars like Dodds, but the suspicions remain alive in Armstrong 1987, 184, who refers to ‘the more spiritual, Plotinian, side of the tradition” and in Wallis, who contrasts Plotinian rationalism with Iamblichus’ superstition (1972, 100). However, other scholars assert that Iamblichus’ thought is more attractive precisely because it recognizes the limits of Plotinus’ putative rationalism, as in Shaw’s distinction between the theurgical Platonism of Iamblichus and his descendants and the non-theurgical Platonism of Porphyry and Plotinus (1995, 5).

 

Thus, differences among scholars tend now to turn more on how similar or not the complementary relationship between theurgy and philosophy in Iamblichus makes his thought in comparison to earlier Neoplatonists. In other words, disputes about theurgy are more fine-grained—and truer to the texts—than they were in Dodds’s milieu. A softer version of these judgments appears in FD’s edition of DA: ‘With Iamblichus and his advocacy of theurgy as a necessary complement to theology, Platonism also becomes more explicitly a religion. Before his time, the mystery imagery so popular with Platonist philosophers (going back to Plato himself), was, so far as can be seen just that—imagery’ (3). They maintain that theurgy is ‘is really only magic with a philosophical underpinning…Partly this was a response to a Christian emphasis on the miracle-working holy man’ (7).