Of all spiritual and religious organizations, none has had a greater influence on modern art than the Theosophical Society.
by Massimo Introvigne*
*Lecture given at Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, Florence, on January 23, 2026, on the occasion of the exhibition “Carlo Adolfo Schlatter. Artist of the Spirit.” The links refer to thematic articles on the relationship of various artists with Theosophy.
Article 1 of 3.
On a day dedicated to Carlo Adolfo Schlatter (1873–1958) and Theosophy, I must begin by saying that Schlatter is the only Theosophist artist I will not be discussing in this lecture, as others who know him much better than I do will be doing so. I will also briefly introduce the Theosophical Society for those who may only have a vague knowledge of it.
The Theosophical Society was founded in New York in 1875 by Russian esotericist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) and American lawyer Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907). Both had experience in spiritualism. In 1878, they transferred the Society’s headquarters to Adyar, India. Blavatsky later moved to London, where she died in 1891.
Madame Blavatsky claimed to receive revelations from the “Masters,” who were not spirits but men so perfect that they had completed the cycle of reincarnation and decided to remain in the world to help others. The list includes Morya, Koot Homi, Jesus, and “Rakoczy,” i.e., the Count of Saint–Germain (1710–1784), the mysterious esotericist of the 18th century.
This results in a complex cosmology based on seven planes of “descent” or materialization. By joining the evolutionary movement of the universe, man is called upon to cooperate in the reverse process of “ascent” or spiritualization, with the help of the Masters.
The Theosophical Society, which emphasizes that it is not a religion, aims to cooperate with this “ascent” through various cultural and spiritual activities. It also builds a bridge between East and West, spreading Eastern religions in the West and offering Hindus and Buddhists in Asia a new awareness of their respective religions.
In 1895, William Quan Judge (1851–1896), one of the founders of the Theosophical Society who claimed to also receive messages from the Masters, broke with Colonel Olcott and took most of the US members with him to form a separate branch. After Judge’s death, many American members (but not all) followed Katherine Tingley (1847–1929), who in 1900 founded the Theosophical community of Lomaland in Point Loma, near San Diego, California. This American branch is now based in Pasadena, and its headquarters were unfortunately involved in the fire of 2025.
In 1907, Olcott, who claimed to be following the instructions of the Masters, appointed Annie Besant (1847–1933) as president of the Society. a former feminist and free thinker who would later play a crucial role in the path to India’s independence. Besant chose Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934), a former Anglican priest who took control of the Liberal Catholic Church, an Anglican schism, and made it the “Church” of Theosophy, as her main collaborator. Leadbeater “recognized” an Indian boy, Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986), as the future World Teacher.
The Theosophical Society experienced three major crises. In 1885, in a report for the Society for Psychical Research, Richard Hodgson (1855–1905) claimed that Madame Blavatsky was fraudulently producing the letters she claimed to receive from the Masters. In 1906, Leadbeater was accused of pedophilia. These accusations would haunt him until his death in 1934. In 1929, Krishnamurti publicly declared that he was renouncing his role as World Teacher. He would continue his spiritual journey outside the Theosophical Society.
These controversies caused several schisms. The most important was led by the leader of the German Section, Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925), who in 1912–1913 founded the Anthroposophical Society, the “Western schism” of Theosophy, whose esotericism presents itself as Christian. The Theosophical Society survived the schisms and today has over twenty thousand members.
Only a few specialized scholars studied Theosophy in universities until 1970. In that year, art historian Sixten Ringbom (1935–1992) published a pioneering study, “The Sounding Cosmos,” in which he claimed that Theosophy had a decisive influence on Kandinsky and the genesis of modern abstract art.
Ringbom was criticized for numerous details, but his book sparked a series of studies showing how many modern artists were interested in Theosophy. In 1983, Linda Dalrymple Henderson published the first edition of her important work “The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art,” in which she showed how Theosophy contributed to the exploration of the idea of a fourth dimension located in space—not time—which had a decisive influence on modern art.
Two major exhibitions, “The Spiritual in Art” (Los Angeles, 1986) and “Okkultismus und Avantgarde” (Frankfurt, 1995), spread the idea of the connection between Theosophy and modern art to a wider audience. In 2013, the conference “Enchanted Modernities: Theosophy and the Arts in the Modern World” at the University of Amsterdam saw the presentation of over fifty papers and the participation of 250 scholars, as well as 2,000 connected via streaming from around the world. We can now speak of a veritable explosion of academic interest in Theosophy and in the question of why a relatively small movement had such a great influence on modern art.
The relationship between the Theosophical Society and the visual arts goes through three stages: didactic, symbolic, and abstract.
It has been claimed that Madame Blavatsky’s writings on sacred geometry and the esoteric meaning of certain shapes (triangles, circles) influenced abstract art. However, there is no evidence that Madame Blavatsky was interested in the artistic avant-garde. If anything, she preferred conventional art capable of illustrating Theosophical doctrines. The first example of this didactic style is the German artist Hermann Schmiechen (1855–1895), who in 1884 painted portraits of Madame Blavatsky and the Masters Koot Hoomi and Morya, on the instructions of Madame Blavatsky and the Masters themselves. Schmiechen’s painting “Sleeping Beauty” alludes to the well-known fairy tale, interpreted esoterically as an allegory of the awakening of the soul.
In the final years of her life, Blavatsky befriended the English painter Reginald Willoughby Machell (1854–1927), who was later commissioned to design the urn for her ashes. Machell abandoned a promising career as an academic painter, turning to works that illustrate Theosophical doctrine. After Blavatsky’s death, he sided with Judge and then with Katherine Tingley. He emigrated to Lomaland, where he lived for 27 years and was active in running a school of Theosophical art. Unfortunately, some of his works were lost in the Los Angeles fire of 2025.
In Lomaland, Machell also emerged as one of America’s finest designers and carvers of chairs and wood panels. Machell’s didactic art reached its zenith in “The Path,” probably painted in 1895, which became an international Theosophical icon and showed the progress of the initiate from Blavatsky’s perspective. In 1919, Machell authorized John James Kayll (1850–1934) to produce a cathedral glass version for the lodge of the Theosophical Society in Leeds, in honor of those who died in World War I, including the artist’s eldest son.
After his choice to produce mostly didactic works advertising Blavatsky’s doctrines, Machell became an author almost unknown outside the Theosophical circles. On the contrary, Maurice Braun (1877–1941), who collaborated with Machell in Lomaland and became an important leader of Tingley’s Theosophical branch, produced art that did not “preach” Theosophy and established himself as one of the leading Californian impressionists.
In the following decades, the didactic artistic style did not disappear from the Theosophical world, but became marginal. One example is the Blue Star Memorial Temple complex, built in 1923 in Halcyon, near San Luis Obispo, California, by the Temple of the People community, one of many small American Theosophical schisms. Harold Forgostein (1905–1990), the fourth leader of this group, painted a cycle there on the legendary Indian chief Hiawatha, whom the Temple considers a great initiate. Forgostein’s works show how a Theosophical didactic art survived throughout the 20th century.
Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.
