The letter continues and is signed Tuitit Bey.

Recently a book on the life of a man called Paschal Beverly Randolph has been published (by John Patrick Deveney, State University New York Press). It describes Randolph as a 19th century black American spiritualist, Rosicrucian and sex magician. He lived in the period just before the founding of the Theosophical Society and played a prominent part in American spiritualism. He obviously had contacts with the Brotherhood of Luxor. In France he met many of the 'magicians' mentioned above who were of course all known to H.P.B. She was acquainted with Randolph; she referred to him as half-initiated (see Index to Collected Writings). Another prominent spiritualist of the time was Emma Hardinge Britten, who outlived Randolph and was alive during the early part of the life of the T.S. (She died in 1899.) She had had contacts with a number of the English spiritualists who were also known to H.P.B. and Olcott. (She is mentioned in Isis and Collected Writings.)

The above paragraphs demonstrate the connection between the Theosophical Society's founders and the spiritualistic and occult activities going on prior to its founding. The link between the occult Brotherhoods of the time and the T.S. is also significant.

One cannot get an objective view of the circumstances of the founding of the Theosophical Society only in terms of these historical events and personages. The background of H.P. Blavatsky is also important. This is a long story, but the significant part of it is that from her early childhood H.P.B. had considerable psychic powers. She was aware of having psychic connections with one whom she referred to in her early days as her 'Protector' because on two or three occasions he did in fact protect her from danger. It was not until 1851 that she actually saw him 'in the flesh' in London and immediately recognized him. It was her Master whom we now know as Morya. He was of Rajput stock (from India) and was seemingly from a different branch of the Occult Brotherhood from that at Luxor. So too was the Master whom we have come to know as Koot Hoomi who figures largely in the Letters to A.P. Sinnett.

It is also interesting to discover that there were still other branches of this Occult Brotherhood. One of them is referred to by P.G. Bowen whose teacher was an Initiate of a branch in Africa. Reading between the lines it seems that this African branch was very ancient and probably associated with the ruins of Zimbabwe. Those interested in some of the grand teachings emanating from this source are advised to read the Sayings of the Ancient One.

One of the aids to clairvoyance recommended, used and purveyed by Randolph was the magic mirror. These apparently had to be made to a particular specification to be efficacious. That, however, did not accord with what one can read about the development of clairvoyance in the Mahatma Letters wherein trainees are seated in front of a polished copper wall and a magnet extended over their heads to develop 'clarity'. On page 221 of Mary Ne ff'sPersonal Memoirs of H.P. Blavatsky there is an interesting illustration behind a Master's head of a magic mirror, very obviously like the ones described by Randolph. This again is another theosophical connection with earlier 19th century practices.

It is significant that in the Mahatma Letters the Masters stressed that they wanted a Brotherhood founded, reminiscent perhaps of the Brotherhood of Luxor, and that the Brotherhood they sought was, as indicated in the Objects of the Society, to be a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of humanity.

However, they particularly stressed that they did not want the Society to become a school of magic, as such schools up till then had apparently been. Nevertheless they used H.P.B. to the limit of her powers to produce the massive literature which not only outlines the philosophy of Occultism as given in the most ancient literature through the Middle Ages up to the present, but adds information never before made public.

Prior to the founding of the Theosophical Society with its outpouring of information, the literature then circulating was derived from a number of classical sources such as Cabalism, Masonry, Rosicrucianism and Alchemy. It contained a wide variety of views on cosmology, the nature of the entities in the inner worlds, and on the inner nature of man, the life after death, and so on. On many important points, however, this literature did not have a common base for its various 'teachings'. There were many inconsistencies, omissions and obscurity, with much obvious suppositional guess-work, little short of pure superstition.

The founding of the Society was at a time when all this spiritualistic and 'occult' activity was rife. One of the first major happenings soon after the formation of the Society was the writing by H.P.B. of her first major work, Isis Unveiled, published in 1877. This was a work of enormous erudition wherein some 1,300 other works were quoted from, some a number of times. In the years since the book was written nearly all the quotations that H.P.B. used have been verified. The book takes the form of numerous essays on various aspects of spiritualism and occultism. It deals with the traditional tenets and practices in world religions both ancient and modern, and with philosophies going back into the remote ages. It demonstrates the vast amount of knowledge in these fields that had been accumulated over hundreds of generations. Apart from what was contained in the old writings, however, there was no attempt at systematization or collation. Readers were made acquainted with aspects of a vast field of knowledge which otherwise could never had been available to them. The work was something that far transcended anything that had up till then been put out from any other source.

It was in this setting that the Theosophical Society came into existence and its three Objects were soon to be determined. It is significant that at that time Theosophy was never even mentioned because no such thing had yet been formulated, although the Society was named the Theosophical Society from the start.

After the founding of the Society H.P.B. began her numerous and voluminous writings. (These have now been collected together into the Collected Writings series edited by Boris de Zirkoff and constitute fourteen large volumes.) In them bit by bit was revealed some of the coherent teaching of Theosophy. However, it did not appear as a comprehensive whole until the writing of The Secret Doctrine in 1888. In that great work the stupendous system of Theosophy was propounded. It was nothing less than a description of the nature and processes of the Universe from the beginning of time. That story necessarily included the history of Man on this planet; together with the origins of all that is included in his total constitution, inner and outer.

In their Letters to Sinnett the Masters refer to their teaching as 'theoretical'. As any student of the H.P.B./Master literature will know, it is massive to the point of being quite outside the capacity of any normal scholar to absorb or comprehend its depths in its entirety. Nevertheless, as H.P.B. said, having produced it it will remain a source of enlightenment for any seekers after Truth for generations to come.

It is not generally realized by students and certainly not by the body of general members of the Theosophical Society that the information contained in H.P.B's great works is not a matter of supposition, conjecture, belief or opinion. It is an expression of knowledge acquired by generations of great men who had perfected their inner vision - far transcending normal clairvoyance - to a point when they could ascertain as facts the origins and nature of all that went on behind the scenes of our physical world. They became familiar not only with the forces, energies and powers of that world but also with its formative processes, how the great archetypes of all that is in Nature had been formed. These archetypes gave rise to the innumerable prototypes of all the life forms in all the kingdoms of Nature including man. The great Adepts knew these things: they did so at the time they were inspiring H.P.B., and no doubt continue to do so. This stupendous scheme of things set out in H.P.B's writings became known as Theosophy.

The classical theosophical literature, then, particularly the two great works Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine were largely inspired if not written by a number of Masters (a student of Olcott's Old Diary Leaves could perhaps discover six or seven) which distinguishes them from the mass of literature on the subject that came later, and which makes them unique.

We have tried to show earlier that the Theosophy given us in the classical literature in itself contained as much as had up to its writing been available in the world's literature, with some further information added to make an incomparably vast and comprehensive scheme. To all this knowledge the Theosophical Society is heir and it was to promulgate it that the Society was founded. To do this, however, there must be students able and willing first to do the necessary work to discover it and second to disseminate a knowledge of it to the best of their ability to the outside world where it could complement and supplement all that is now being discovered by scientific research into so many aspects of Nature's workings. Such a collaboration could not only provide the keys to many mysteries but inform man of his proper place in the mighty scheme of things, and even show him the grand part he is destined to play in it.