Prerequisites to Membership of the Theosophical Society

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Theosophy and Theosophists Series · 13 pages

Thirteen pages, first published in the supplement to The Theosophist volume IV number 8, May 1883, pages 9 to 11, and republished in the Collected Writings volume IV under the vivid title "The Shylocks of Lahore". The frontispiece is by Sonia Chivarar. *It is the file to read for what joining actually committed a member to*, since it quotes the forms themselves.

The text she opens with — many are called, but few are chosen — is applied, to her great regret, to the Society collectively and to a certain number of its members individually. Numerous are the branches sprung from the parent trunk, she writes, and still more numerous the Fellows admitted within its fold. What each of them signed is then set out in the actual wording of the Application and the Obligation. Every member declared himself, over his own signature, to be in sympathy with the objects of the Theosophical Society and acquainted with its rules; was represented by two sponsors, fellows in good standing, as an individual who would be a worthy member; and pledged his solemn word of honour to abstain from doing anything that might bring discredit upon the Society or its officers. Beyond those promises made before witnesses, she notes, there are other obligations just as sacred, taken during initiation — chief among them the recognition of the right of every other theosophist to every privilege the member would claim for himself, with a promise that the beliefs of other members will enjoy, so far as he is concerned, the same toleration and respect he desires for his own. What follows is her account of the specific case that provoked the article, and the reason the piece is more than administrative: she is arguing that the Society's troubles came less from its enemies than from members who had signed all of the above and then behaved as though they had not.

Read the full text (PDF, 0.7 MB, 13 pages)