Blavatsky Expels a Friend of Communists

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Blavatsky Speaks Series · 5 pages

The shortest document in the whole section, and it earns its place by being a decision rather than an argument. Pasted into Blavatsky's scrapbook is an undated cutting headed Extreme Measures Advocated, reporting that Charles Sotheran — declaring himself a labour socialist — had spoken at a mass meeting of strikers and urged them to take extreme measures against the capitalist exploiters. Neither the source nor the date nor the author of the cutting is recorded.

Her response, written beside it, is four sentences long and is reproduced entire: a Theosophist becoming a rioter, encouraging revolution and murder, a friend of Communists, is no fit member of our Society. He has to go. The interest of the fragment is partly biographical — Sotheran was a founder member of the Society and appears elsewhere in this very section, quoted approvingly in her open letter to her correspondents of 1875 — and partly as evidence of where she drew a line. The remaining pages are the standard suggested-reading list for the series.

Read the full text (PDF, 0.3 MB, 5 pages)