G.R.S. Mead Shows His True Colours

G.R.S. Mead · Down to Earth Series · 6 pages

The conclusion of G.R.S. Mead's Orpheus: The Theosophy of the Greeks, published by the Theosophical Publishing Society in London in 1896, reproduced verbatim from page 305 — a single page of the author's own summing-up, followed by two long editorial footnotes.

Mead commits his book to the reader with the figure of a small skiff launched on the troubled sea of modern thought, hoping a favourable current will carry it to some few who can value its freight. He then names the three sources he combined in building it, and ranks them as he goes: Lobeck, who was a scholar and no mystic; Taylor, half scholar and half mystic; and Blavatsky, whom he calls a mystic and no scholar. He closes by declaring himself convinced that the Mysteries have not gone from the earth. The two editorial footnotes address those rankings. The first observes that insinuations had long been levelled at Thomas Taylor by the scholars of his day and that Mead had joined the chorus, setting against it Professor Wilder's remark that others may have known more Greek but Taylor knew more Plato, together with Taylor's own image of esoteric philosophy as a luminous pyramid terminating in Deity; it refers the reader to “Thomas Taylor, the English Platonist” in the Buddhas and Initiates Series and to the Prometheus Trust. The second takes up the phrase “no scholar” as applied by Blavatsky's own private secretary, and notes what his description omitted — her standing as an initiated Occultist.

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