Theos-Talk Archives (March 2006 Message tt00290)

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The Birth of An Esoteric  Popery

A. BESANT MADE ALL THE  MISTAKES  AGAINST

WHICH SHE WAS WARNED BY THE 1900 LETTER

Carlos Cardoso Aveline

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Dear Friends,

The 1900 Letter to Annie Besant  is rather controversial.  Many do not 
accept its legitimacy.

Yet its text, especially those parts of it which were eliminated by C. 
Jinarajadasa in  his edition of the letter,  contain many severe and 
accurate warnings about future mistakes that Annie Besant should avoid.  Now 
we can see she did not  avoid them, at all.

The whole of  the Letter is in agreement with the general perspective 
followed by HPB/Masters students in the decades that followed., especially 
by the ULT, after 1909.  In  no way the letter suggests the course of action 
actually followed by A. Besant.

Let’s compare what the full text of the 1900 Letter says, with what Annie 
Besant did. (1)  The Letter statements are in capital letters:

1) “IS THE WORSHIP  OF A NEW TRINITY MADE UP OF THE BLESSED M.,   UPASIKA   
AND YOURSELF TO TAKE THE PLACE OF EXPLODED CREEDS.  WE ASK NOT FOR THE 
WORSHIP OF OURSELVES.”

In fact, in the following years the Adyar Society was transformed in a 
semi-Christian belief system, with a Masonry,  a Catholic Church with its 
priests and Bishops, and even a new Christ of its own making.  Dogmatic 
religions stopped to be criticized. The Masters were transformed in objects 
of emotional worship and blind belief.

2) “THE DISCIPLE SHOULD IN NO WAY BE FETTERED. BEWARE OF AN ESOTERIC 
POPERY.”

Annie Besant did exactly what the Letter’s author told her not to do. She 
created the illusion that the leaders of the Adyar Society were clairvoyant, 
and that they could consult the Masters at any time, thus being able to 
avoid making any mistakes. As we know, Popes are supposed (by their 
followers)  to be infallible.  The “logic result” of such a popish  
infallibility was that everyone should obey Annie Besant blindly. Thus an 
“Esoteric Popery” emerged, with its own “apostolic succession”.

3) THE INTENSE DESIRE TO SEE UPASIKA REINCARNATE AT ONCE HAS RAISED A 
MISLEADING  MAYAVIC IDEATION.  UPASIKA HAS USEFUL  WORK TO DO ON HIGHER 
PLANES AND CANNOT COME AGAIN SO SOON.

By then, Annie Besant had started to create a collective expectation  that  
H.P.B.  was coming back as  the little daughter of G. N. Chakravarti. In 
fact, that was the starting point for a  neotheosophical version of the 
“myth of the divine child”.

The 1900 letter  did grant some peace to HPB’s soul  in its afterdeath 
process. The hysteria about her “Second Coming” was immediately abandoned.  
Yet the neochristian  myth of  the “divine child” would soon come back in a 
most unfortunate  way  through C. W . Leadbeater’s false clairvoyance, with 
the presentation of the boy Jiddu Krishnamurti as the future “Christ”. The 
consequences of such a myth of the “divine child” ended by bringing shame 
upon the Adyar Society and provoking several scandals of which C.W. 
Leadbeater was always the centre.

4) “YOU HAVE FOR SOME TIME BEEN UNDER DELUDING INFLUENCES.”

This includes the influences which had made Annie Besant persecute William 
Judge in 1894-95, that had made her  join the mediumnistic group of Mr. 
Sinnett’s ‘inner circle’ (which promoted false contacts with the Masters), 
and that made her follow G. N. Chakravarti’s leadership.

5) “SHUN PRIDE, VANITY AND LOVE OF POWER.”

In the following years Annie Besant concentrated all power in her hands. She 
was the President of the T.S., the Head of  the Esoteric School, the leader 
of  Co-Masonic groups, the responsible for the Egyptian Rite, etc.

Yet she depended on C.W. Leadbeater’s “clairvoyance”  to take every real 
decision.  CWL dominated her because of her  vanity and love for power.

6) “BE NOT GUIDED BY EMOTION BUT LEARN TO STAND ALONE.  BE ACCURATE AND 
CRITICAL RATHER THAN CREDULOUS. THE MISTAKES OF THE PAST IN THE OLD 
RELIGIONS MUST NOT BE GLOSSED OVER WITH IMAGINARY EXPLANATIONS.  THE E.S.T. 
MUST BE REFORMED SO AS TO BE AS UNSECTARIAN AND CREEDLESS AS THE T.S.   THE 
RULES MUST BE SIMPLE AND ACCEPTABLE TO ALL.”

In  fact, the T. S. was reformed so as to become so sectarian and blind as 
the E. S.T.,  and not the other way around.

Annie Besant did not learn to stand alone and used emotional  worship to get 
more personal power.

The Adyar movement became a complicated, bureaucratic, ritualistic 
belief-system,  under the cover of liberty of  thought.  As to the reference 
to the “errors of the old religions”, the sentence  is a clear vindication 
of the “Prayag Letter”, a message from the Masters received through H.P.B.,  
whose  authenticity was publically denied by H. S. Olcott but which now is 
part of the “Mahatma Letters to A.P.  Sinnett” as edited by the Adyar TPH 
(Letter  134, non-chronological editions, or Letter 30, chronological 
edition).  William Judge had openly defended the authenticity of that letter 
 in his New York magazine THE PATH (March 1895, p. 430, and  June 1895, p. 
81).  The 1900 Letter mentions the same idea and underlines the importance 
of discussing the mistakes of  all dogmatic religions.  Something which 
Besant and Leadbeater, of  course, never did.

7) “WE NEVER TRY TO SUBJECT TO OURSELVES THE WILL OF ANOTHER. AT FAVOURABLE 
TIMES  WE LET LOOSE ELEVATING INFLUENCES WHICH STRIKE VARIOUS PERSONS IN 
VARIOUS WAYS.   IT IS THE COLLECTIVE ASPECT OF MANY SUCH THOUGHTS THAT CAN  
GIVE THE CORRECT NOTE OF ACTION.”

This is a precious bit of advice for the next decades and centuries. In 
1900, it was also a prophecy. It was an announcement that the days of  
verbal and visual contact with  the Mahatmas were over, but  that an  inner 
contact was still possible at a subtle level.  These sentences were unduly 
despised by A. Besant, who preferred her own clairvoyant fancies about 
Initiations and verbal contacts with Masters.  Right now,  these same 
sentences may reveal to us the middle way between two equally mayavic 
extremes: one, the idea that the Masters are completely out of touch,  or 
that  they do not exist; the other, that they can be contacted in  any 
visual or verbal way, or by lower personalities.

8) “MISLEADING SECRECY HAS GIVEN THE DEATH BLOW TO NUMEROUS ORGANIZATIONS.  
THE CANT ABOUT THE  ‘MASTERS’ MUST BE  SILENTLY BUT FIRMLY  PUT DOWN. LET 
THE DEVOTION AND SERVICE BE TO THAT SUPREME SPIRIT ALONE OF  WHICH EACH (2) 
ONE  IS A PART.”

Annie Besant did exactly the opposite.  She used misleading secrecy as a 
power-mechanism, and so  she gave a death-blow to  most of Adyar Society as 
a spiritual level. She used the names of the Masters to justify her fancies, 
and she exacted personal devotion from theosophists to herself, in the name 
of the  Masters.

9)  “YOU WILL HAVE TO LEAVE A GOOD DEAL OF YOUR EMOTIONS AND CREDULITY 
BEFORE YOU BECOME A SAFE GUIDE AMONG THE INFLUENCES THAT WILL COMMENCE   TO 
WORK IN THE NEW CYCLE.”

Here the letter says, in an implicit yet clear way, that Annie Besant, as 
she was, could not be a safe guide. And she was not.   The text also 
mentions “the new cycle”, which constitutes an internal evidence of  its 
accuracy,  since H.P.B. had positively written --  apparently “en passant” 
--  that the the new cycle, Aquarius Age,  would start in that year of 1900. 
 (3)



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Much more can be said about this controversial Letter. Yet three things seem 
to stand clear:

1) That the 1900  Letter  announces most mistakes Annie Besant would make in 
the 33 following years;

2) That the warning was not heard;

3) That anyone except a High Initiate would find it most difficult to 
foresee all  such mistakes in such a stern and  accurate way;

4) That the content of the 1900  letter is still important for students in 
the 21st century.


Best regards,  Carlos Cardoso Aveline.


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NOTES:

(1) The letter as published by C. Jinarajadasa  can be seen at the book 
“Letters From the Masters of the Wisdom”, First Series,  Letter  46, pp. 
99-100, TPH, Adyar, India, Sixth Printing, 1973. As to the complete text, it 
is in the magazine “Theosophical History”, London,  October 1987, pp.  
115-117.  The full text was first published in “The Eclectic Theosophist” in 
September 1987 by Mr. Emmet Small, a long-standing coleague of Boris de 
Zirkoff. Boris most likely also considered the letter authentic.

(2) The word “each” has been ommitted, probably by mistake, in the text 
published in “Theosophical History”.

(3) See “Collected Writings of H. P. Blavatsky”,  TPH, volume VIII, p. 174, 
footnote.  It is part of the text entitled “The Esoteric Character of t he 
Gospels”.



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