The Luciferian Public Sphere: Theosophy and Editorial Seekership in the 1880s

This article demonstrates the development and practice of editorial seekership during the early years of the prominent British theosophical journal Lucifer, when it was co-edited by H. P. Blavatsky and Mabel Collins. Rather than promoting a particular set of occult beliefs, Lucifer encouraged an open-ended and sometimes self-defeatingly anarchic mode of spiritual seekership that was perfectly aligned with the eclecticism, seriality, and topicality of the periodical form. In demonstrating the editorial team's production of a press-mediated form of spiritual identity, this article calls for a new recognition of the occult revival's relationship to print capitalism and the importance of periodicals to esoteric studies more broadly.