teachings.... What I want to point out now more particularly, and in the interest of true Theosophy, is, that you are now making the grand mistake—one never made by H. P. Blavatsky—of thinking, writing, and speaking as if Theosophy and the Theosophical Society were one and the same thing, absoutely identical; and that there can be no Theosophy in the world without the Theosophical Society, and no Theosophists outside of it.... You must know that in leaving the Theosophical Society, the great majority of us at all events have not given up Theosophy, even if we may feel compelled to teach it under another name, and though we can no longer work with or through the Theosophical Society, we are none the less carrying on the great work which H. P. Blavatsky initiated.

But in the old days we did at least think that the Theosophical Society stood for pure Theosophy and pure Morality. We cannot think or say this any longer. The "Theosophy" of the Theosophical Society is now a definite creed and dogma based upon authoritative psychic pronouncements, from which those who dare to differ are first of all squeezed out of office by the President, and finally compelled to leave the Society, being denounced in the strongest language as "persecutors" and "haters." I am quite aware that all the time you are preaching freedom of opinion; but that is one of the farcical aspects of the régime which you inaugurated.... Whatever you may preach, it is now notorious that your practice has been the exact reverse. You commenced by turning out the Vice-President for daring to hold a different opinion from your own as to the inception of the Society; and you then proceeded so to manipulate matters that several old and tried officials who had been in opposition to your pronouncements and policy, were ousted from their positions as General Secretaries of Sections.... Well, you succeeded in getting your own supporters appointed—and in losing many hundreds of old members.

Doubtless you will now have complete control and be able to mould the Society to your own will and liking, and train it to "obedience" to your psychic authority and visions. At what expense and sacrifice of principles you have already done this, we all know. But let none imagine that this is the basis on which H. P. Blavatsky founded the Society; or that it will thus fulfil the mission for which it was intended; or that it can thereby become other than a narrow and exclusive sect. And if perchance your statement is true that the Theosophical Sciety—which you so mistakenly identify with Theosophy—is now "in the days of scorning," possibly even more than it was in the old days; What and who is it that has made it so?

Is it not because the President and General Council have set their seal and official condonation to a "theosophy" which countenances the grossest immorality, and which can advocate—as a means of "discharging [sic] thought-forms" (see Van Hook's pamphlet)—a practice which you yourself once characterised as being "when taught under the name of Divine Wisdom, essentially earthly, sensual, devilish?" Yet it is thus taught and justified—with an appeal to the laws of reincarnation and karma—in Van Hook's pamphlet, which you and the General Council have refused to repudiate, and have thereby condoned.

And now, since you have had your own way, and have cleared the Society of the elements of the so-called "hatred and persecution"; can you not at least refrain from hitting behind our backs? Nothing is sadder for your old friends and comrades than to see you stoop to veiled insinuations, and even direct untruths; missing no opportunity—not even in the review of a book—of striking unjustly and falsely at those who have recently been your opponents, and who have now no direct means of answering you, or of refuting your statements within the Society itself.

I have italicised a few passages which seem to be of special importance as showing that, thirteen years ago, Mr. Leadbeater's sinister hand had already grasped the Society and its infatuated President, and that his vile and immoral teachings, supported by her, had driven out some of the oldest and most clear-headed and clear-sighted of H. P. Blavatsky's friends and pupils; among them Mr. G. R. S. Mead, one of the Leadbeater Committee of Inquiry, who also resigned at the time Mrs. Besant became President for the same reasons as those stated by Mr. Kingsland. The "practice" to which he alludes in his Open Letter is of course now well known to be that taught and advocated by Mr. Leadbeater, who claims that in so doing he is acting on the advice and under the authority of one of the Masters of Wisdom. Could a more terrible infamy be perpetrated!

M. M. Schuré and Lévy on the Crisis of 1913

LET us see, however, what others have to say seven years later on the state of the T. S. In 1913 another violent crisis convulsed this miserable travesty of a Society that once stood for the highest principles and ideals, but which even a Lake Harris might blush now to be associated with. As before, it centred round the shocking perverter of morals who had obtained complete ascendancy over Mrs. Besant. A book entitled Mrs. Besant and the Present Crisis in the Theosophical Society was published in 1913 by M. Eugène Lévy, "with a Prefatory Letter by M. Edouard Schuré," the well-known author of The Great Initiates and other mystical works. Writing to M. Charles Blech, General Secretary of the French T. S., M. Schuré states that he feels "compelled to retire officially from the T. S." and that it is his "duty" to give his "reasons straightforwardly." After alluding to the date (1907), when M. Blech had offered and he had accepted the honorary membership in the Society, M. Schuré goes on to speak of Mrs. Besant, as she had then appeared to him, in high terms, expressing the hope that "the nobility of her past career" was an augury "that the T. S. would continue in the broad way of tolerance, impartiality, and veracity which forms an essential part of its programme." M. Schuré then continues:—

Unfortunately things turned out otherwise. The primary cause of this deviation lies in the close alliance of Mrs. Besant with Mr. Leadbeater, a learned occultist, but of an unsettled disposition and doubtful morality. After Mr. Leadbeater had been found guilty by an advisory Committee of the T.S. Mrs. Besant publicly announced her reprobation of the educational methods with which he was charged.... By an inconceivable change of front she soon afterwards declared her intention of bringing Mr. Leadbeater into the T.S. again and she succeeded.... The excuses she gave for this recantation were charity and pardon. The real reason was that the President needed Mr. Leadbeater for her occult investigations, and that this collaboration appeared to her necessary to her prestige. To those who have followed her words and acts from that time onwards, it is clearly manifest that Mrs. Besant has fallen under the formidable suggestive power of her dangerous collaborator, and can only see, think and act under his control. The personality henceforward speaking through her is ... the questionable visionary, the skilful master of suggestion who no longer dares to show himself in London, Paris, or America, but in the obscurity of a summer-house at Adyar governs the T. S. through its President. The ill-omened consequences of this influence were soon to appear before the world through the affair of Alcyone and the founding of the Order of the Star in the East.... If a real Indian initiate, a Brahmin or otherwise, of ripe age, had come to