| Summary:
|
From Pat Deveney's database:
OBlavatsky Association, Proceedings of.
1934 Irregular
Language: English.
Publisher: Blavatsky Association, "Printed for Private Circulation".
1/1, November 13, 1924.
60 pp.
Apparently only three issues were published although the association continued to be active until the late 1940s. This was the product of the Blavatsky Association formed in London in 1912 by Alice Leighton Cleather (1846-1938), William Kingsland and others to promote the works of H.P. Blavatsky. It was associated with the H.P.B. Library, founded in London in 1917 and now in Victoria, British Columbia, that grew out of Cleather's collection of original editions of Blavatsky's works. Cleather had been one of the "Inner Group" in London (whose teaching, based on Cleather's notes, were published in Theosophical Forum in 1940) and then become a lifelong enemy of Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater for their deviations from Blavatsky's original teachings, turning first to Katherine Tingley and then pursuing her independent course while formally embracing Buddhism. The first issue reported on the formation of the association, with Mrs. A.J. (Iona) Iona Davey and F.L. Gardner as members. "We want to form an Association which will, if possible be held together purely on the one basis of H.P.B. and her Teachings and Ideals; and if we can do that, we shall in our own way be carrying on the work which she initiated." The issue contained a spirited defense of Blavatsky against some remarks of Arthur Conan Doyle's in Pearson's Magazine, March 1924, with the letters exchanged by Davey and Doyle. The issue also contained the controversial "Circular Letter on exclusion of T.S. members from the Association" that attempted to justify the Association's refusal to admit Theosophists to membership in the Association.
|
| Claude-Generated Themes:
|
The Proceedings of the Blavatsky Association records the founding of a body constituted in London in November 1924 for a single purpose: to defend Helena Blavatsky's reputation and her writings. Its inaugural number, printed for private circulation, reports the first meeting, the formation of a Defence Committee, that Committee's dealings with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — then the most prominent Spiritualist in the English-speaking world and no friend to Blavatsky's claims — the observance of White Lotus Day, and a letter from the Sinhalese Buddhist revivalist Anagarika Dharmapala. The most revealing item is a circular letter on the exclusion of Theosophical Society members from the Association, a clause that was argued over at the meeting itself; William Kingsland, Blavatsky's biographer, is minuted as warning of the risk of being swamped by Society members. An organization founded to defend the founder of Theosophy, which judged that it could not do so from within the Theosophical Society, says a good deal about where that movement stood fifty years after its beginning.
Generated by Claude from the periodical's digitized text; a thematic reading, not a bibliographic description.
|
