Theos-Talk Archives (July 2001 Message tt00172)

----- Original Message -----
From: Frank Reitemeyer <ringding@blinx.de>
To: <theos-talk@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 14, 2001 9:02 AM
Subject: Theos-World Untrue ULT statement in their book "The
Theosophical Movement"


> Many serious students feel that some passages in the book THE
THEOSOPHICAL
> MOVEMENT 1975-1950 (not published by Theosophy Company, L. A., but
by
> CUNNINGHAM PRESS) are erroneous.
>
> In an old email Dallas wrote me
>
>
> As Dallas offers his help I draw attention to only three excerpts
from the
> TM book that are erroneous, misleading and defaming against
Katherine
> Tingley. Here are the three choice passages:
>
> "The 'notes' referred to are nothing more than transcripts of
'psychic'
> messages, obtained through Mrs. Tingley as medium, and alleged to be
to
> Judge from the discarnate H.P.B. The tone of these 'notes' is
explanation
> enough of the reluctance of their present possessors to make them
easily
> accessible. Although dressed up in feeble imitation of H.P.B.'s
colloquial
> style, they are strongly reminiscent of the drivel of the
seance...."
> - p. 285 TM 1951 edition
>
> "Dr. H.N. Stokes, editor of the Critic, then expressed his own
opinion that
> the 'notes' were in Judge's handwriting....Mr. Ryan, apparently,
welcomed
> Stokes' judgment that the psychially received notes were in Judge's
> handwriting, but the price he paid for this vindication was the
reduction of
> Judge to a dabbler in Spiritualism, a mere psychic dupe.
Judge...needed a
> medium, a 'helper,' [Mrs. Tingley] to get in touch with H.P.B.!
What can
> succession to such a 'leader' be worth?"
> - p. 286 TM 1951 edition
>
> "The much-proclaimed and never-produced 'private papers of Mr.
Judge' bear a
> rather remarkable likeness to 'private notes' of Mrs. Tingley."
> - p. 671 TM 1925 edition
>
> The anonymous ULT writer is suggesting that these "notes" were
forgeries by
> Mrs. Tingley. To my humble unterstanding this Anonymous and you,
Dallas,
> seem to ignore same basic facts which gives another light to the
story.
> I limit myself only to three pieces of evidence which are ignored by
ULT
> officials since decades (although surely known to them), the
uninformed
> public and even the uninformed, uninitiated members of the ULT:
>
> (1) See Mr. Judge's letter (addressed to Dr. Archibald Keightley and
other
> E.S.T. Councillors in England ) dated January 4, 1895. The letter
was first
> published in The O. E. Library Critic (Washington, D.C.), November
1932 by
> the editor Dr H. N. Stokes. Letter is preserved in the Archives of
The
> Theosophical Society, Pasadena, California.
>
<SNIP>>>>>>>>>

President-Founder Henry S. Olcott had a few encounters with Mrs.
Tingley during his lifetime. His admittedly biased opinion is probably
not known to the majority of subscribers here. For what it is worth,
his comments from his 6 volume book, OLD DIARY LEAVES, gives some of
his part of Theosophical History. Mrs. Tingley says she "Reorganized"
the Theosophical Society in 1898. Evidently she didn't notify Mrs.
Besant, and Mr. Olcott, the President of the original organization.

Old Diary Leaves, Vol XI, originally published in The Theosophist from
Jan. 1905 to Dec. 1906.

Olcott is in Paris in 1896, page 69 - 72
He Comments----


PARSI ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH
Page. 69


.
The so-called "Crusade of American Theosophists the World", headed by
Mrs.Tingley, the self-styled "Leader of the Theosophical Movement ",
were in Paris at the time. One of their sympathisers sent me a copy of
their handbill with a written note asking me to attend the meeting.
This I did not do as I did not care to have my name circulated about
America as a friend, perhaps a follower, of the female successor to
Mr. Judge; but I sent Xifre, and two other gentlemen, MM. Bailly and
Mesnard, to attend the meeting and report the facts to me. Mrs.
Tingley's handbill was worded as follows:

"CRUSADE OF AMERICAN THEOSOPHISTS AROUND THE WORLD.
____________

The Crusade, which started from New York in June last, having
reached Paris will meet the public in the

PETITE SALE, Hotel Continental,
Entree Rue Rouget-De-Lisle,

On Thursday Evening, 20th August 1896, at 8-30 o'clock.
When the members will give addresses on Brotherhood, Toleration,
Rebirth, and kindred theosophical subjects.

The Crusade consists of:
Mr. E. T. Hargrove, President of the Theosophical Society in
America.
Mr. Claude Falls Wright, President of the New York Theosophical
Society, and Secretary to the late Madame Blavatsky, and to William Q.
judge.
Mr. H.T. Patterson, President of the Brooklyn Theosophical
Society.
Mrs. C. F. Wright, Lecturer to the New England States Theosophical
Societies.
Mr. F.M. Pierce, Representative of the School the Revival of the
Lost Mysteries of Antiquity; and Mrs. KATHARINE A. TINGLEY,
Leader of the Theosophical Movement.

_________________

THE ABOVE MEETING IS FREE
in French and in English. Musical Selections."

The Hotel Continental where this meeting was held is one of the most
expensive in Paris, the charges for rooms are enormous; it is chiefly
patronized by Americans and Englishmen. The Crusaders must have paid a
pretty figure for their meeting-hall. My representatives reported that
a few people in evening dress sauntered in from the dining room,
stayed awhile and then sauntered out again. At the time when the
attendance was largest there were about forty persons in the room,
including the Crusaders: at the close there were seven in the
audience. Mrs. Tingley's organ, however, reported the meeting as
follows:

"The result of the work in Paris was the foundation of the French
division of the
Theosophical Society in Europe on August 21st, at 8-30 p.m., in a
large parlor at the Hotel St. Petersburg. Public meetings at the same
hotel, on the evenings of the 16th, 18th, and 19th, and a larger
gathering at the Hotel Continental on the evening of the 20th, led up
to this farewell meeting on the 21st."
Comments are superfluous.






President-Founder Olcott is in Bombay.
Pages 84- 88

At this same time the Tingley Crusaders reached Bombay on their
voyage around the world and opened their proposed Indian campaign with
a public meeting at the Town Hall of Bombay. In the report of this
event and in the handbill which was distributed at Bombay, we see the
same display of boastfulness and recklessness of statement which has
been noticed in the remarks upon their doings at Paris. The handbill
states that they are travelling around the world on behalf of the
Theosophical Movement "Which was begun in America by Madame H.P.
Blavatsky, continued by William Q. Judge and is now under the
leadership of Mrs. Katharine A. Tingley." The purpose of the visit to
India "is to organise a Theosophical Society in this country on the
original lines laid down by the Founders of the Movement ". The
members of the party are as announced in the Paris handbill, with the
amplification that Mrs. Tingley now styles herself
"Leader of the entire Theosophical Movement throughout the world.."
Considering that we, leaders, had lived and worked, at Bombay four
years, and that our names were familiar in Hindu households throughout
the whole Continent, this vainglorious announcement naturally provoked
the mirth of the country, and the scheme to organise Theosophical
Societies on an improved pattern, fell flat. The Crusaders had their
journey for their pains and there remains not a trace of their passage
through the country.


The Times of India, for 30th October, 1896 said:
"The above visitors to Bombay, who are stated to be travelling round
the world, occupied the platform at a meeting held at the Town Hall
last night, but although seating accommodation had been provided for
some five hundred of the general public only about seventy-five
persons, principally Parsis, attended the meeting."

Mrs. Tingley, with an eye to the shortcomings of the Brahmins, as it
would seem, said:
"Spiritual pride was one of the greatest barriers to enlightenment
and the idea that some one form of religion was the oldest or the most
profound in some cases blinded people to facts. The speaker did not
believe that India was the source of the world's religions, though she
said that some teacher or other might flatter the Indians with that
view in order to gather them into a special fold. The occult learning
that India once shared in common with other nations, did not originate
here and does not exist to any extent in India proper today. There was
no religion now existing that had remained pure and undefiled and she
urged the Hindus to seek beneath the mere external form of their
religion for the deeper and grander truths underlying it. The same
thing should be done by the Mohammedan and the Parsi. The first step
to take was the practice of unselfishness. Work for the world should
be done, for such work was of far greater
importance than the mere cultivation of the intellect."

Mr. E. J. Hargrove thought:
"the time had arrived for the West to take the lead in the higher
evolution of humanity. Old souls were incarnating in America; old
forces were coming up. The Theosophical Society had been founded in
New York and with the impetus generated there, the movement had since
spread over the entire world. The time had arrived for a new impetus
to be given the movement from the same source. The present leader of
the Theosophical movement, Mrs. Tingley, seemed to him like one of
these old souls, grown wise in past incarnations, who had returned to
carry on the work begun by Madame H. P. Blavatsky and furthered by Mr.
W. Q. Judge. Mrs. Tingley's occult powers were not only of a most
remarkable and unusual character, but her brilliant leadership
since Mr. Judge's death, had more than justified her appointment to
this post of grave responsibility."

Mr.Claude Falls Wright allowed his fancy to spread its wings after the
following fashion:
" When the American Theosophists went back to their own country they
were to lay the foundation stone of a great School for the revival of
the lost Mysteries of Antiquity. In this school would be demonstrated
the workings of nature and the spiritual laws of life. The temple
mysteries of the
ancients would there be revived. This revival would only now take
place because Western humanity had reached a point where interest was
taken in the higher science. A great mystic, Mr. Wright said, been
born into the world, capable of leading humanity to an understanding
of these mysteries, and the work begun by Madame Blavatsky and
continued by William Q. Judge and other great souls was to find its
blossoming in this great School under this great mystic: he referred
to Mrs. Katharine A. Tingley. In time he hoped a branch would be
started in India, when things were less disturbed than now."
Something went wrong before the tour was finished, for Mr. Wright
and his wife left Mrs. Tingley on the way home, Mrs. Cleather (another
Crusader) shortly after, Mr. Hargrove likewise, and the promised
School of the Ancient Mysteries has never, so far as is known, taken
root or turned out a single adept or Mahatma.





Pages 326- 331

326 OLD DIARY LEAVES

A search made among Mr. Judge's Papers a fortnight after his death
(21st March, 1896) revealed the fact that he had nominated as his
successor, Mrs. K. A. Tingley, an American Spiritualistic medium,
entirely unknown to myself and the members in general. He added a
condition, it seems, that the secret should be closely kept for one
year, from all except those whom he had chosen to open and examine his
papers. Dr. Franz Hartmann, a fellow-seceder with Judge, but who at
the time of writing had given his "voluntary and prompt resignation
from the Presidency of the T. S. in E. (Germany) after my (his)
discovery that 'the spirit of intolerance prevailed therein,'"
contributes to the Theosophical Forum ' the following caustic
paragraph about the alleged secret methods, employed in the interests
of Mrs. Tingley:
"The letters before us, privately written by Mr. B...C ....
S...C... and others, in which orders are given as to how the public
should be mystified and the members of the T. S. taken by surprise,
and in which every doubt about the Mahatmaship of Mrs. Tingley is put
down as a deadly sin against the Holy Ghost, are a masterwork of
Jesuitism; but it is none of our business to trouble ourselves about
the means which any church organism may use for obtaining power over
the minds of the faithful and over their money; I only wish to state
that the church of Mrs. TingIcy never has been:and is not now
representing the real Theosophical Society which has been established
by H. P. Blavatsky, nor did the real W. Q. Judge ever resemble the
caricature which the adherents of Mrs. Tingley have made of him and of
which they have created an object of adulation and idolatry."
Another group into which the secessionists had split in revolt
against Mrs. Tingley's autocracy, called itself the "Temple" and had
for its "veiled prophet" another psychic, figuring under the pseudonym
of "Blue Star", published in a circular dated at Syracuse', N. Y.,
February 1st, 1899, the following indictment:
"Before Wm. Q. Judge passed into the silence, he left with the
selected Outer Head an injunction and a request. He told her that at
a certain time after he was gone she would receive a certain sign,
immediately upon the receipt of which, she was to send for the person
bearing that sign, and place that one in the Inner Circle of advisers.
This person, whom we will refer to by the impersonal name of Blue
Star, had strong occult connections with the Lodge of Masters, and
would receive directions which would be transmitted to the O.H. and
from her to the different groups. The sign was sent to the O. H. over
a year ago, but she refused to accept it, or recognize the person
giving it. She disobeyed this injunction as well as the one commanding
her to keep secret her connection with the Lodge for one year.
Overweening ambition and desire for public recognition is the
cornerstone of her failure to keep connection with the Lodge. She
organized the Crusade around the world which should not have been
attempted until ten years after the death of W. Q. J., when conditions
in America, now under preparation, would have made it a great success,
instead of the useless expenditure of time, money and force that it
really was. She selected the site for the School of Mysteries which is
not the place selected by the Lodge. Then she called the Convention at
Chicago, where was cut the last strand of the thread which bound her
to Masters. Since then she has been working solely on her own
responsibility."

A year earlier (February 26th, 1898) Dr. J. D. Buck, later of the
"Temple", backed by twenty-four sympathizers, forming what was called
the Amrita Group, had himself notified her thus of his revolt:

"I have resigned from that section of the E. S. T. over which you
preside. This action due to you no less than myself. Being no longer
in sympathy with your methods, and my confidence in your direction
being broken, I could not receive instruction or bestow obedience to
any order of yours. You have converted the E. S. into a starchamber
where insinuations and slander against Brothers is indulged in
without protest, and where explanation or defence is not permitted..
This I regard as not only unbrotherly but as Jesuitical and cowardly.
I think such methods demoralising.
I deny that they emanate from the Great Lodge and I believe they will
rebound on all who participate in them."

A third split, led by Mrs. Tingley's most trusted lieutenant, Mr. E.
T. Hargrove, who was one of a globe-trotting party called "Crusaders
", sent out (at an expense of $30,000) to advertise their party in all
countries where we were known in the hope of destroying our influence,
and who issued a circular on the 1st March, 1898, in which Mr.
Hargrove, with a pathos which would be touching if it were not so
funny, solemnly notifies his "Purple Mother ":

"You have ceased to be the Outer Head of the E.S.T in the
interior and true sense. You will before long cease to be the Outer
Head of the in the exterior sense. The Outer Head to follow you has
already been appointed by the Master." She must have thought this
cruel, indeed, as coming from one to whom she had written on September
5th, 1896, signing herself " Purple",:
"You are more to me than all in this great world." We have Congreve's
authority that hell has no fury like a woman scorned, which may
explain her saying in a letter of April llth, 1898, to Mr.
Neresheimer, that Messrs. Griscomb, Hatgrove and Spencer were a lot of
"occult desperadoes".

The chronological sequence of the secession movement would then be
as follows:

May 8th, 1891.--H.P.B. died, after appointing Mrs. Besant her
successor: subsequently, influenced by representations made by him,
the latter united Mr. Judge with herself in a joint leadership.

July l0th, 1894.--Judicial Committee, on Mr. Judge, sat in London.

November, 1894.--Mr. Judge issues a circular "deposing" Mrs.
Besant and assuming sole control.

April 28th, 1895.--Boston Convention: American Section secedes.

June 27th, 1895.--Secession recognized, and Charter of American
Section transferred to loyal minority.

A. P. Sinnett appointed Vice-President to fill vacancy caused by
Mr. Judge's secession.

The pitiful part of this pitiful business is that each of these
secession leaders pretends to be acting under the inspiration and
guidance of the Masters, while at the same time doing everything to
degrade the name of and bring shame upon the Theosophical movement.
The thoughtful reader cannot fail to see that these splits and
quarrels were an inevitable sequence to the original Boston secession,
secretly engineered by Mr. Judge--the lust of power spreading its
contagion from person to person. At present, (August, 1906) Mrs.
Tingley has been the most successful and, as "She Who Must Be Obeyed
", rules her millionaire and pauper followers as Autocrat at Point
Loma.
P. 331, Old Diary Leaves,
by Henry S. Olcott, Volume VI.
===============================================

DK>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
The above is from the Olcott 6 volume history of the Theosophical
Society, from his own standpoint. The book is available from the
Theosophical Society in America, www.theosophical.org , and is in
print from them only, as far as I know. Mr. Alego wrote me that it
should be available on-line, but I haven't seen it yet.

I am not familiar with most of the names of these Crusaders, or their
subsequent movements.

I wonder if any of their movements have survived down to the present
day? - other than Wheaton/Adyar, TUP, and ULT?

Dennis