A Theosophical Love Feast in France

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Theosophy and Theosophists Series · 7 pages

Seven pages, first published in Lucifer volume IV number 21, May 1889, pages 248 to 250, and republished in the Collected Writings volume XI under the title "Our Society's Agapae". *It is the lightest thing in this batch* — a piece of good-humoured reporting rather than argument — and it is a rare glimpse of the movement's social life.

The French brothers had established what Blavatsky calls theosophical agapai, love feasts, minus the mystic and religious gloom of the ancient ones: monthly dinners, purely vegetarian, which she thinks may do good work in the long run as promoters of peace, soul-harmony and brotherly love. The joke she builds the piece around is that a good dinner sharpens wit while it softens the heart — a proposition she attributes to those in whom, of Plato's three souls, the stomach-soul is the most energetic, and then corroborates from Byron, quoting his line about the all-softening, overpowering knell, the tocsin of the soul, the dinner-bell. The dig that follows is at her own English members: the theosophical dinners in France have an undeniable advantage over the no-such-dinners in England, since they represent a few hours at least passed under the white flag of truce. The particular occasion described is the Hermes Dinner of 23 March at Lavenue's on the Boulevard Montparnasse, presided over by Count Gaston d'Adhémar and attended by members and associates of the local Hermes lodge together with several distinguished guests interested in theosophy. Beneath the lightness there is a serious point about faction, and it is made in a single line — blessed be ye, O dinners, if presided over by the angel of peace, who stands between the fighting and the dead.

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