It was during the period between 1923 and 1928 that we established our contact with the United Lodge of Theosophists. . . . The history of this movement is considerable . . . [and it] is said that the United Lodge of Theosophists was founded by a Robert Crosbie . . . The policy of the U.L.T. was to maintain the body of the doctrine taught [by the founders of the Theosophical Movement] unaltered. This may have been at times a bit on the fanatical side, but it was substantially, I would say, a sound policy.[1]
The United Lodge of Theosophists (U.L.T.) was organized primarily by Robert Crosbie (1849-1919), who as a long-time member of the Theosophical Society, had witnessed it splinter into various factions.[2] Crosbie had moved to Boston from Montreal in order to set himself up in a shoe and leather manufacturing business; there he joined the Theosophical Society in June 1888 and soon became a close associate of W. Q. Judge. When Judge died in 1896, Crosbie supported Katherine Tingley as Judge’s successor—that is, as head of the Theosophical Society in America, which by then had split from the Theosophical Society in Adyar (which was under the leadership of Annie Besant). Mrs. Tingley renamed the Theosophical Society in America the “Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society” and moved its headquarters to Point Loma, a peninsula in San Diego. Around 1900, Crosbie moved to “Lomaland” to help Tingley launch the fledgling theosophical community; by 1904, he had lost confidence in her leadership and he left Point Loma, moving to Los Angeles. There he joined Ernest Temple Hargrove’s new Theosophical Society, which Hargrove (who was elected the President of the Theosophical Society in America after Judge’s death) had formed after he too had become disillusioned with Tingley.
In Los Angeles, Crosbie discovered that a number of his fellow Theosophists, John Garrigues among them, shared his non-sectarian view of theosophy. In 1909, he—with the help of these like-minded individuals—formed a “United Lodge of Theosophists” that was based on the premises that H. P. Blavatsky and W. Q. Judge were the original founders of the Theosophical Movement and that only their unaltered works carried the teachings of Theosophy as it was intended to be delivered to modern society (along with other “Source Theosophy”—that is, works that are philosophically consonant with these teachings.[3]) The group set up a program of making this material available to the public and inaugurated a program of practical theosophical education.
As Wolff explains it, the reason for this restriction had to do with “an old statement, which I understand is ultimately traceable to the Great Buddha, that the Masters of the East will not appear in the West save in the last quarter of each century until such time as the Blessed One takes an incarnation in the West.” In the last quarter of the nineteenth century,
there was one of the Brothers known by the pseudonym of Koot Hoomi who was very much interested in the West. He had in fact, it seems, been a student in a Western university and he had more than usual sympathy with Western man. He proposed to the Brotherhood to give a more complete formulation of the body of knowledge maintained by this Brotherhood, rendering it available to the West and, in fact, all the world. Most of the Brothers thought Western man was not sufficiently advanced to receive it. He was, however, supported by two Brothers known as Morya and as Hilarion, and was supported a considerable degree by the one known as the Maha-Chohan. The agent for this work, the one around which it centered, was H. P. Blavatsky, later followed by W. Q. Judge. H. P. Blavatsky was the means whereby the writing of Isis Unveiled became possible, but those who wrote it did so by tulku means; that is, they entered into her and she stepped aside while they contributed what they had to contribute. In the case of The Secret Doctrine, I understand a different method was employed, but the evidence seems to be that The Secret Doctrine is the composition primarily of the one known as Koot Hoomi, and Morya, and to some extent by HPB—she contributing, it is said, the third section and the footnotes in her own right. This was a revelation of certain material that had been held more or less esoterically.
The U.L.T. is thus oriented “to maintaining the body of teachings that were given in the last quarter of the nineteenth century intact and unchanged until the last quarter of this century, which would be a period when again the Masters of the East would send a representative to the West.” In particular, there is an insistence on the
publication of books, such as Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine, The Ocean of Theosophy, and so forth . . . in the form of a precise reproduction, even including typographical errors. The policy is no change whatsoever. There is a reason for this, for in the case of the third edition of The Secret Doctrine put out by Annie Besant and Mead, there was something like 80,000 alterations, some of them, to be sure, only typographical, but some making a change in meaning. The policy of the U.L.T. was to maintain the body of the doctrine taught unaltered. This may have been at times a bit on the fanatical side, but it was substantially, I would say, a sound policy.[4]
Accordingly, the U.L.T. does not recognize any other authority than Source Theosophy, as reflected in the fact that it does not identify any leaders or teachers among its ranks; indeed, all of its associates are referred to as “students.” The organization also insists on the anonymity of living persons who write on behalf of U.L.T. in order to protect against any idolization of personalities or self-promotion. Even Crosbie himself claimed no special status, although he is held in high esteem by associates. After Crosbie’s death, the Lodge in Los Angeles established the Theosophy Company in 1925 to serve as fiduciary agent for the associates. No leader was recognized, but John Garrigues was acknowledged as a major figure in the Los Angeles U.L.T. until his death in 1944, along with Grace Clough and Henry Geiger.
The U.L.T. developed into an international association of study groups largely through the efforts of Parsi B. P. Wadia (1881-1958). Wadia was a member of the Theosophical Society in Adyar, having joined in 1903; he served the organization in a number of capacities (including that of Annie Besant’s secretary). He resigned in 1922 because he thought that the Theosophical Society in Adyar had “strayed away from the ‘Original Programme’.”[5] From 1922 to 1928 he labored in the United States, and helped found U.L.T. lodges in New York, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. Following his departure for India via Europe, he encouraged local students to found U.L.T. lodges, including those in Antwerp, Amsterdam, London, Paris, Bangalore, and Bombay. At present, U.L.T. lodges and study groups are located throughout the U.S. and in Belgium, Canada, England, France, India, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, Nigeria, Sweden, and Trinidad (West Indies). Because of the considerable contributions of Wadia, he is the only person, with the exception of Crosbie, within the U.L.T. who is identified by name.
In June 1922, Hilarion had alerted Wolff and his wife that their work would merge with that of Wadia:
Mr. Wadia is a member of the central fraternity of adepts. He has seen and understood conditions at the center. He will come again and your line will merge with his and out of that merging will be born the union of many now independent lodges and into it will be drawn many theosophists who now are seeking the true home center of the lodge.[6]
This led Wolff to ask Morya (through Sarah) how they might reconcile the U.L.T.’s policies and their own personal contact with the Masters:
Master, the most faithful group of students of the Secret Doctrine that we know is the “United Lodge of Theosophists,” but they are particularly closed to the idea of the particular coming of any Master to the Western World before 1975 owing to specific statement in the Secret Doctrine and the Esoteric Instructions. It would seem that to meet them one must use the authority of the Secret Doctrine convincingly. Could you direct us to such a use of the Secret Doctrine if such is possible?
Morya responds that this is a mistaken reading:
I, Morya, say to you that such statements are false. In the Esoteric Instructions it is stated that no Master of Wisdom will come to the Western World after December 1899. This means in an exoteric and public manner. They are always here; the Masters have never left this western continent without their forces constantly being used by adepts, chelas and the illuminati.[7]
Despite this reservation, Wolff became an associate of the organization on December 16, 1922, and he and Sarah would become regular attendees of the Lodge’s meetings.[8] Here is Wolff’s description of the first meeting the couple attended in Los Angeles:
It was during the period between 1923 and 1928 that we established our contact with the United Lodge of Theosophists. This contact proved to be of quite considerable importance. The first time we went to a United Lodge meeting, we were recognized by an associate who had known me up at Stanford. He immediately informed certain leading figures in the association, namely, John Garrigues and Mrs. Clough. We were taken to a side room, and there we had an important conversation. John Garrigues, at first, commiserated with us because of the death of Mrs. La Due. But then he developed a critical evaluation of the Temple of the People. That put me upon the defensive, and I championed the Temple of the People as best I could. Apparently I did pretty well, for he complimented me later. This opened the door to a problem in the Theosophic movement with which we were very little familiar.[9]
The last sentence in this passage is telling: Wolff and his wife had just left the Temple of the People after a dispute over succession, and now the couple learned that similar incidents were endemic in the theosophical realm. It would appear that Garrigues and Clough did not consider the work of LaDue and Dower to be consistent with that envisioned by Crosbie; in particular, they considered LaDue and Dower to be too concerned with the cult of personality than with the true teaching of Theosophy. And, despite Wolff’s defense of the Temple, perhaps some of this criticism rang true to the couple; at any rate, they had found a home in the U.L.T. that allowed them to focus on the teaching and not on politics. Wolff and Sarah regularly attended meetings until 1928, but stopped visiting for two reasons: logistically, it became too difficult to get to the meetings; and psychologically, it did not meet a basic need for Sarah.
Wolff explains both:
We attended the meetings at the United Lodge of Theosophists for some time, going fairly frequently until they built their new building at 33rd and Grand.[10] From San Fernando to the old location was about a distance of twenty-five miles, most of the driving being done at night. But the new location involved a considerably longer drive, with the result we found it too much of a burden to make the trip.
Now as to myself, I was deeply impressed with the character and intellectual quality of the work that was produced by the U.L.T. association. I could have found a basic home in it, but I must admit that it produced an effect that seemed cold. It seemed as though the heart side was relatively neglected—a side that had been rather strongly developed in the Temple of the People at Halcyon. This was a deficiency that affected [Sarah] more profoundly than it affected me. She did not find it an adequate opening for her resources. Though we always have remained a friend of the United Lodge of Theosophists, we have not identified ourselves with it in the exclusive spirit.[11]
Finally, as Wolff explains below, there is one additional the policy of the United Lodge of Theosophists that he would take to heart—that is, the U.L.T.’s guidance regarding the balancing of one’s need to make a living with one’s spiritual work:
There was here a real problem. To carry on the public work of propounding and propagating a philosophy connected with the deepest interests of life, on one hand, and then making a living, upon the other. One of the policies in the United Lodge of Theosophists was that one should make no income out of his public work, that he should divide his activities into two parts: one of them the economic part, and the other the idealistic or religious part of his work. It was a noble standard, but unless one was really efficient in the economic sense, had unusual talents, as was true in the case of John Garrigues, it could become a too difficult problem. We found, ultimately, that in trying to perform public work, which never paid much more than its cost, and trying to make a living upon an orchard, that the orchard tended to lose out. This is a basic problem.
I agree with the position maintained by the U.L.T. that one should not make the public work an economic activity for himself. I have followed this example as best I could, and in my past practice for several years, there has been no assignment of dues to be paid by a membership; there has been no asking for financial support. . . . There is a basic principle here and it has been formulated this way: that no charge can be made for a spiritual service, nor gift accepted. On the other hand, for a physical service, the contribution of a place where people can meet, the providing of chairs, and the material amenities, and for the intellectual effort that one puts forth which he has gained by his objective effort here, his study and so forth, a material compensation may legitimately be received, but not for a spiritual service.[12]
Wolff would have some reservations about the next organization he joined in relation to this issue.
Endnotes
[1] Franklin Merrell-Wolff, “Autobiographical Material: A Recollection of My Early Life and Influences” (Lone Pine, Calif.: July 6, 1978), audio recording, 2-4.
[2] For much of the following, see James Santucci, “Theosophy and the Theosophical Societies” in Theosophy Forward, May 2013 Special Edition. Accessed April 17, 2017. http://www.theosophyforward.com. See also Editors of Theosophy, comp., The Theosophical Movement, 1875-1925, a History and a Survey, 1875-1950 (Los Angeles: Cunningham Press, 1951) as well as Bruce F. Campbell, Ancient Wisdom Revised: A History of the Theosophical Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), esp. 127-143.
[3] Thus, for example, the Mahatma letters to A. P. Sinnett (that is, the letters of the Masters K. H. and M. written between 1880 and 1886) are excluded from this category because private letters are no substitute for the actual Theosophical teachings. On the other hand, the letters in Sinnett’s The Occult World are accepted, as is the letter from the Maha-Chohan, because these do profess such teaching.
[4] Franklin Merrell-Wolff, “Autobiographical Material: A Recollection of My Early Life,” 3-4.
[5] B. P. Wadia, “To all Fellow Theosophists and Members of the Theosophical Society, A Statement by B. P. Wadia” (Pamphlet, July 18, 1922).
[6] Sarah A. M. Wolff, “Channeled Messages 1922,” 79.
[7] Ibid., 140.
[8] The Aquarian Theosophist 4, No. 3 (January 17, 2003), 27.
[9] Franklin Merrell-Wolff, “Autobiographical Material: A Recollection of My Early Life,” 4.
[10] “Theosophy Hall,” which was built in 1927. For more information about this building, visit http://ult-la.org/about-ult-la/theosophy-hall-los-angeles.
[11] Franklin Merrell-Wolff, “Autobiographical Material: A Recollection of My Early Life,” 4.
[12] Ibid., 4-5
