Annie Besant
One of The Theosophical Society's Key People
Early Life
Annie Wood was born on 1 October 1847 in London into an upper-middle-class family. She was the daughter of William Burton Persse Wood (1816–1852) and Emily Roche Morris (died 1874). The Woods originated from Devon and her great-uncle was the Whig politician Sir Matthew Wood, 1st Baronet from whom derives the Page Wood baronets. Her father was an Englishman who lived in Dublin and attained a medical degree, having attended Trinity College Dublin. Her mother was an Irish Catholic, from a family of more modest means. Besant would go on to make much of her Irish ancestry and supported the cause of Irish self-rule throughout her adult life. Annie's father died when she was five years old, leaving the family almost penniless. Her mother supported the family by running a boarding house for boys at Harrow School. However, she was unable to support Annie and persuaded her friend Ellen Marryat to care for her. Marryat made sure that she had a good education. Annie was given a strong sense of duty to society and an equally strong sense of what independent women could achieve. As a young woman, she was also able to travel widely in Europe. Annie was an Anglican but would later abandon the faith.
Theistic Period, 1872-1874
Due to domestic violence in the Besant home, Annie Besant increasingly stayed in London with her mother. There in 1872 she met Rev. Charles Voysey, who preached in St. George’s Hall in St. John’s Wood to a congregation known as the Theistic Church. Rev. Voysey had been tried for heresy in 1869 and expelled from the Church of England.
Besant was relieved to meet a person like herself, who no longer believed in the authority of the Bible, or in the doctrines of original sin, eternal punishment, and vicarious atonement, but who still believed in God. Besant continued reading the works of leading theologians under Rev. Voysey’s guidance, and concluded that she no longer believed in the divinity of Jesus Christ.
London
Besant then became a prominent speaker for the National Secular Society (NSS), as well as a writer, and a close friend of Charles Bradlaugh. In 1877 they were prosecuted for publishing a book by birth control campaigner Charles Knowlton. The scandal made them famous, and Bradlaugh was subsequently elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) for Northampton in 1880.
Thereafter, Besant became involved with union actions, including the Bloody Sunday demonstration and the London matchgirls strike of 1888. She was a leading speaker for both the Fabian Society and the Marxist Social Democratic Federation (SDF). She was also elected to the London School Board for Tower Hamlets, topping the poll, even though few women were qualified to vote at that time.
She was an early advocate of birth control, and in the late 1880s she became a prominent Fabian socialist under the influence of George Bernard Shaw.
Finally, she publicly embraced Socialism in the Summer of 1885, during a lecture by a young and little-known George Bernard Shaw. As they became acquainted, he greatly admired her skills as a lecturer: "Now at this time Mrs. Besant was the greatest orator in England, and possibly in Europe... I have never heard her excelled." He saw her involvement in Fabianism as a means of developing her organizational skills and teamwork.
In selecting the Fabian Society for her passage through Socialism Mrs. Besant made a very sound choice; for it was the only one of the three Socialist Societies then competing with one another in which there was anything to be learnt that she did not already know. It was managed by a small group of men who were not only very clever individually, but broken in to team work with one another so effectually that they had raised the value of the Society's output far above that of the individual output of any one of them... This was exactly what Mrs. Besant needed at that moment to complete her equipment."
In 1887, a mass rally against unemployment was held in Trafalgar Square, at which Annie Besant was a key speaker at the event. The rally was disrupted by the police leading to one death and many injuries. It was a key moment in the development of greater political awareness of the working class, and was given the term ‘Bloody Sunday’.
Theosophy
In 1890 Besant met Helena Blavatsky, and over the next few years her interest in theosophy grew, whilst her interest in secular matters waned. She became a member of the Theosophical Society and a prominent lecturer on the subject. As part of her theosophy-related work, she traveled to India. In 1898 she helped establish the Central Hindu School, and in 1922 she helped establish the Hyderabad (Sind) National Collegiate Board in Bombay (today's Mumbai), India. In 1902, she established the first overseas Lodge of the International Order of Co-Freemasonry, Le Droit Humain. Over the next few years, she established lodges in many parts of the British Empire. In 1907 she became president of the Theosophical Society, whose international headquarters were, by then, located in Adyar, Madras, (Chennai).
When Blavatsky died in 1891, Besant was left as one of the leading figures in theosophy and in 1893 she represented it at the Chicago World Fair.
Freemason
In 1902, she became a Freemason – joining the co-freemasonry movement. She was attracted by their belief that men and women should join together to work for a better world.
Besant eventually became the Order's Most Puissant Grand Commander…
With her tireless energy and enthusiasm, she helped found new orders in Britain and other parts of the world. Her energy played a key role in the international growth of the order.
Occult Chemistry
Besant met fellow theosophist Charles Webster Leadbeater in London in April 1894. They became close co-workers in the theosophical movement and would remain so for the rest of their lives. Leadbeater claimed clairvoyance and reputedly helped Besant become clairvoyant herself in the following year. In a letter dated 25 August 1895 to Francisca Arundale, Leadbeater narrates how Besant became clairvoyant. Together they clairvoyantly investigated the universe, matter, thought-forms, and the history of mankind, and co-authored a book called Occult Chemistry.
India
Besant emigrated to India, where she founded the Central Hindu College in 1898. She established the Indian Home Rule League in 1916 and became its president; in 1917, she became president of the Indian National Congress, but would break ties with Ghandi. Besant remained in India until her death in 1933, but returned to England in 1926–1927 with her protege, Jiddu Krishnamurti, whom she announced as the new Messiah.
In 1914, Annie Besant purchased an Indian newspaper, The Madras Standard, and changed its name to New India. She used this newspaper to support the movement for Indian Nationalism, attack the colonial government of India and promote India's self-rule. In 1916 Besant launched the All India Home Rule League and became the first Organizing Secretary of the Central Committee. Organized to demand self-government within the British Empire, this was the first political party in India to have regime change as its main goal.
In 1929, twenty years after his "discovery", Krishnamurti, who had grown disenchanted with the World Teacher Project, repudiated the role that many theosophists expected him to fulfil. He dissolved the Order of the Star in the East, an organisation founded to assist the World Teacher in his mission, and eventually left the Theosophical Society and theosophy at large.
Indian Boy Scouts Association
During the course of 1916 Besant organized some troops of Boy Scouts in Madras and Benares. They followed the Scout Law, although the boys wore Indian turbans and sang Indian songs. When a request was sent to the founder of the international movement of Boys Scouts, Robert Baden-Powell, to recognize the Indian troops as part of the international organization, he refused. She then began to campaign for it, publishing an article in her newspaper New India on October 13, 1916, an article entitled "Why not Indian Scouts?" She organized the Indian Boy Scouts Association, based in Madras, headed by herself and George Arundale.
United States
Dr. Annie Besant traveled to the United States with her protégé and adopted son, Jiddu Krishnamurti. Dr. Besant visited a vast area of pristine land in Ojai. She envisioned this site as a place to establish an educational center that would nurture spiritual, artistic and intellectual growth as well as physical and mental well-being. She also knew that sustainable worldwide improvement in the human condition begins with the individual. In 1927, Dr. Besant purchased the land where the Besant Hill School of Happy Valley now exists for the purpose of creating an educational community where, “students and teachers were to be unfettered in their research and educational experiments.” She envisioned a community that would foster the development of individuals to pursue the task of practical and effective social change.
Her Death
In 1931 she became ill in India.
Besant died on 20 September 1933, at age 85, in Adyar, Madras Presidency, British India. Her body was cremated.
Closing
A very key figure in the spread of Global Satanism.