Theos-Talk Archives (November 2006 Message tt01146)

Dear Friends, 
Geoffrey Farthing, who was national secretary of the Adyar TS in England in the 1970s and was well-known all over the world for his important theosophical work, wrote this about Charles Leadbeater, in his 1996 Manifesto:

C. W. LEADBEATER
CWL joined the Society in 1883. He did not, unlike Annie Besant, receive a welcome from HPB, nor was he admitted to her Inner Group.
He was given some instruction by a regular chela at Adyar for a period and developed his clairvoyance but there is no reference that this relationship continued.
He did receive a reply to his early communication with the Masters but there is no corroborative evidence that he ever had any more contact with them after these introductory letters.
It also came to light that his veracity is much in question: his statements, for example, about his age, his family in South America, and his implying that he had been to Oxford as an undergraduate were discovered later to be false. In the light of what the Master K.H. said about God, religion and the priestly caste in Mahatma Letter X, had Leadbeater been a chela he could never have allied himself with the Liberal Catholic Church and certainly he could never have allowed himself to be made a Bishop and thereafter always dress as such. The Masters had said "Our chief aim is to deliver humanity of this nightmare... etc." (A personal God of Theology) (M.L. X, 2nd and 3rd editions).
This is important in the light of CWL's later claims of an intimate and continued relationship with not only one but a number of Masters, even up to the highest in the Hierarchy from whom he claimed periodically to have received instruction in such matters as the upbringing of Krishnamurti.
In the light of some of these supposed contacts e.g., Comte St Germain, Jesus, etc., the association of the Liberal Catholic Church with the Society was justified.
However, both the Church and the CoMasons were representative of past dispensations. They both had their roots in ceremonial magic, the practice of which HPB did not endorse on account of the possible dangers involved. In a letter which Damodar wrote to Sinnett, Masonry and Rosicrucianism were specifically forbidden (M.L. Old Edition No. 142A, Chronological No. 14A).
During the founding of the Society it had been proposed that the Society might become Masonic. This was specifically decided against. Other behavior of the then leaders is also questionable.
In view of HPB's sundry comments about Masonry (into which she was admitted on account of her knowledge of it, but never formally 'initiated'), having lost its secrets, how came it that the Leaders of the Society not only espoused Co-Masonry but the Egyptian Rite which CWL together with a colleague in Australia had devised and which is still widely practiced by some members of the E.S.?" 
You can see all of the Manifesto made by Geoffrey Farthing at 
http://www.teosofia.com/1996_GAF_Manifesto.html

Regards,  Carlos. 


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