Open Letter to Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Blavatsky Speaks Series · 19 pages

Published in Lucifer in December 1887 under the heading Lucifer to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Greeting — a title chosen for maximum effect, given what the magazine was called. The letter is addressed to Edward White Benson as My Lord Primate of All England, and uses the open form deliberately: to convey to him, and through him to the clergy, their flocks and Christians generally who regard theosophists as the enemies of Christ, a brief statement of where Theosophy actually stands.

The statement itself is more conciliatory than the framing suggests, and is among the clearest short accounts of the Society's purpose anywhere in the library. Theosophy is not a religion but a philosophy at once religious and scientific; the chief work of the Society so far has been to revive in each religion its own animating spirit, by encouraging enquiry into the true significance of its doctrines and observances. The claim that follows is the one everything else rests on: that the deeper one penetrates into the meaning of the dogmas and ceremonies of any religion, the greater their apparent underlying similarity becomes, until a perception of fundamental unity is reached — and that this common ground is the Secret Doctrine of the ages.

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