Divine Feminine: Theosophy and Feminism in England

Conclusion

227 Conclusion In 1929 the Theosophical Society entered its longest lasting crisis: Jiddu Krishnamurti dissolved the Order of the Star and abdicated his position as the World Teacher. In The Dissolution of the Order of the Star, he rejected all attempts to organize spirituality, arguing that “Truth is a pathless land . . . . Truth, being limitless, . . . cannot be organised; nor should any organisation be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path.” His goal, he claimed, was not to found a new religion, but to set men free—from all religions, all philosophies, and all fears.1 As William Kingsland put it, “the youth who was boomed and advertised for years as the great Avatar, and to whom credulous believers gave homage on their knees in London drawing-rooms and elsewhere, has now entirely repudiated the whole business.”2 Krishnamurti’s decision threw the TS into chaos. A member of the Hastings and St. Leonard’s Lodge recalled returning from holiday to discover that the lodge officials had resigned, the lodge rooms become deserted, and the Liberal Catholic Oratory been dismantled, all virtually overnight.3 Many members followed Emily Lutyens’s lead, arguing that theosophists had to recognize that it was necessary to choose between the old ways, and the new spiritual directions represented by Krishnamurti.4 Others attempted to reconcile Krishnamurti’s teaching with the existence of the TS and its subsidiary organizations. “Truth is a pathless land”: that claim called into question the whole of the complex edifice that the Adyar TS had become in the first decades of the twentieth century. Some members continued to support the TS out of devotion to Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater. But in 1933 Besant died, and Leadbeater died a few months later in 1934. George Arundale succeeded Besant as president of the TS and reoriented it toward what he described as “straight Theosophy.” According to Arundale, theosophy itself was in danger of being forgotten, as all sorts of other interests and activities absorbed the energies of the society’s members. Theosophy was not “some popular panacea for the ills of the world.” Arundale 228 divine feminine therefore rejected the political engagements that Besant had encouraged during her term as president of the TS.5 Members of the Theosophical Order of Service were soon complaining that Arundale’s straight theosophy had caused a split between the TS and the TOS, and that the TOS no longer received the support, the recognition, or the resources that it once had.6 Women in particular no longer joined the TS in such numbers. In 1925 women had constituted almost three-quarters of new members (73 percent); by 1930 that percentage had fallen to just under two-thirds (65 percent), and by 1935 it had fallen slightly lower (62 percent). New members of either sex were also joining at much lower rates: in 1920, the TS in England had enrolled 750 new members; in 1925, 705. In 1930 only 310 new members joined, and in 1935, 276. Total membership of the TS in England fell from a high of 5,170 in 1928 to 3,520 in 1935. Part of the decline can be attributed to factors over which the TS had little control: Margaret Jackson, then general secretary in England, blamed the reduction in membership on the impact of the economic depression, which had eroded the incomes of many of the society’s supporters .7 The redistribution of income after World War I had permanently altered the face of Britain’s class society, and the professional class from which the TS had drawn the bulk of its membership no longer enjoyed the relative benefits that had been taken for granted in the years before 1914.8 Today, although the society still exists, it has declined substantially in numbers and influence. Next to straight theosophy, Arundale stressed “personal development .” Under Blavatsky, Besant, and Leadbeater, he argued, “authority and scientific revelation have loomed large” within the TS. Arundale’s goal was “to swing the pendulum back to individual experience, to individual intuition, to the challenge of the individual ‘I.’”9 Krishnamurti’s teachings also gave a crucial place to self-transformation: “I think most of us realize the urgency of an inward revolution, which alone can bring about a radical transformation of the outer, of society.” The utopian link between the transformation of subjectivity and the transformation of the material world was still there, but the mechanisms that were to...