Fourth Lecture

But in direct contrast to all this, one might say: How did the particular society—or societies, indeed—that collected round the Blavatsky phenomenon, come by their name of ‘Theosophical Society’? One may have never so much,—and I have enumerated much that one may have,—against the Theosophical Society; but at any rate it certainly cannot be said about its origin at the beginning of the nineteenth century, that they took the dictionary meaning of the word ‘theosophy’, and founded a ‘Theosophical Society’ because they wanted to spread Theosophy as understood in the dictionary sense. That was most decidedly not the case. The case was, that a whole mass of communications were lying there from the spiritual world, that had come through Blavatsky,—lying there, ready, as communicated material. And the people now found them-selves, for reasons which I will discuss later, as good as compelled to execute the charge of this material by the method of a society. And then there came the need of a name. And then, the people who were ... well, everything is ‘debated’ to-day, and they ‘debated’ everything even in those days ... who were debating then, what name they should give it, asked themselves whether it should be called the ‘New Mystical Society’? or should it be called the ‘Rosicrucian Society’? or the ‘Magian Society’? And then they hunted up what other words there were, and finally hit on the word ‘theosophy’ and ‘theosophical’.