Colonel Henry Steel Olcott
American military officer, journalist, lawyer, Freemason, Buddhist and the co-founder and first president of the Theosophical Society.
Early Years
Olcott was born on 2 August 1832 in Orange, New Jersey, the oldest of six children, to Presbyterian businessman Henry Wyckoff Olcott and Emily Steele Olcott. As a child, Olcott lived on his father's New Jersey farm.
During his teens he attended first the College of the City of New York and later Columbia University, where he joined the St. Anthony Hall fraternity, a milieu of well-known people. In 1851 his father's business failed and he had to leave the university.
While living in Amherst, Ohio, Olcott was introduced to spiritualism by relatives who had formed a spiritualist circle after seeing the Fox sisters on tour in Cleveland. During this period, Olcott became interested in studies of "psychology, hypnotism, psychometry, and mesmerism”. In 1853, after returning to New York, Olcott became a founding member of the New York Conference of Spiritualists. He also published letters and articles on spiritualist topics in the Spiritual Telegraph under the pseudonym "Amherst."
In 1874
In 1874 he became aware of the séances of the Eddy Brothers of Chittenden, Vermont. His interest aroused, Olcott wrote an article for the New York Sun, in which he investigated Eddy Farms. His article was popular enough that other papers, such as the New York Daily Graphic, republished it. His 1874 publication People from the Other World began with his early articles concerning the Spiritualist movement.
It was at Chittenden, Vermont, while he was on this assignment, that he met Madame Blavatsky who had come there on instructions from her Master. Joining forces with her, from this point onward he worked to carry out the purposes of the Great White Brotherhood, especially as those purposes related to the specific mission assigned to HPB by her Master. "Bound together by the unbreakable ties of a common work—the Masters' work—having mutual confidence and loyalty and one aim in view, we stand or fall together…" (The Theosophist, August 1932, p. 471).
The year 1874 was a turning point in his life. He met H. P. Blavatsky in October during his second stay at the Eddy Farmstead, and they quickly became friends. This meeting was not coincidental. One of Blavatsky's teachers explained later that
One or two of us hoped that the world had so far advanced intellectually, if not intuitionally, that the Occult doctrine might gain an intellectual acceptance, and the impulse given for a new cycle of occult research. Others — wiser as it would now seem — held differently, but consent was given for the trial. . . . So casting about we found in America the man to stand as leader — a man of great moral courage, unselfish, and having other good qualities. He was far from being the best, but . . . he was the best one available. With him we associated a woman of most exceptional and wonderful endowments. Combined with them she had strong personal defects, but just as she was, there was no second to her living fit for this work. We sent her to America, brought them together — and the trial began. — The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, Letter 44
The Founding of the Theosophical Society
When the Theosophical Society was founded a year later in 1875, Colonel Olcott was elected president for life. From that time until the end of his life, the Society was his first care. He guarded it jealously from every threat to its existence; he gave his physical strength and the benefit of his wide experience to its organization, and his administrative ability to nourish it and foster its growth. For he believed with his whole heart that the good of mankind depended upon a channel through which the Brotherhood of Adepts could work to destroy the gross materialism of the day and awaken the spiritual nature of man.
Olcott Becomes a Buddhist
In 1880 Helena Blavatsky and Olcott became the first Westerners to receive the Three Refuges and Five Precepts, the ceremony by which one traditionally becomes a Buddhist; thus Blavatsky was the first Western woman to do so. Olcott once described his adult faith as "pure, primitive Buddhism," but his was a unique sort of Buddhism.
Freemasonry
Masonry and Theosophy come together at a point in the formation and work of Le Droit Humain, the French obedience of Co-freemasonry which began in the 1880’s. The early prominent members of the Theosophy movement: Annie Besant, George Arundale, Charles W. Leadbeater, C. Jinarajadasa and Henry Steele Olcott soon became prominent members of Co-Freemasonry.
There is a certain irony in the fact that two of the early figures in the push for Indian independence from Britain and for the revival of Buddhism in Sri Lanka had also been involved with Freemasonry, at least to some extent. The enigmatic Madame Helena Blavatsky, head of the Theosophical Society, had been granted a charter for a co-Masonic Order by British esoteric Freemason John Yarker. Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, the Theosophical Society’s number two, had also entered Freemasonry as a young man.
In India
This was whom Madame Blavatsky was sent by her Master to the United States, to find, the man chosen by Them to found with her The Theosophical Society, to which he gave its democratic constitution with full freedom of thought, which does not exist in other spiritual organizations. The remainder of his life was spent in organizing it all over the world. He brought to his task his unsullied record of public services rendered to his country, his keen capacity, his enormous powers of work, and an unselfishness which, Mme Blavatsky declared, she had never seen equalled outside the Âshrama of the Masters.
In 1878 he and Blavatsky visited India. The two settled there in 1879 and in 1882 established the permanent headquarters of the Theosophical Society of Adyar, Madras. He assisted Annie Besant in establishing the Central Hindu College at Vārānasi (Benares). With her, he expounded their Theosophist ideas in appearances in India and Ceylon [Sri Lanka]. Urging educational advancement upon Ceylon Buddhists, he saw three colleges and 250 schools established as a result of his efforts. His acceptance by and influence on the Buddhists was far-reaching. Identified with Eastern philosophical thought, he also helped revive Hindu philosophy; a pandit conferred on him the sacred thread of the Brahman caste.
Revival of Buddhism in Ceylon: The War on Christianity
For two hundred years or more, the Buddhists of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) had struggled to maintain their religion under Western, Christian overlords, learning to accept the hardships that clinging to their ancient faith involved.
In 1880 Col. Olcott, together with Mme Blavatsky and Damodar Mavalankar went to Galle (Sri Lanka), where they were received very warmly. There they embraced Buddhism by taking Pañcasila. Col. Olcott has written,
‘Our Buddhism was that of the Master-Adept Gautama Buddha, which was identically the Wisdom-Religion of the Aryan Upanishad-s, and the soul of all the ancient world-faiths. Our Buddhism was, in a word, a philosophy, not a creed.’
Thereafter, Olcott entered upon one of the most important phases of his life in espousing the Buddhist cause. His contribution towards the revival of Buddhism in Ceylon is one of great significance as also his movement for popular education.
The reason for the warm welcome to Olcott and Blavatsky was that a leading member of the Sangha, a brilliant speaker, Bhikku Mogittuwatte Gunananda, who had been in correspondence with Mme. Blavatsky in New York, had received a copy of Isis Unveiled from her and had translated passages from it into Sinhalese. The people were therefore aware of the interest of the Theosophists in Eastern religions, especially Buddhism.
Col. Olcott employed a three-pronged strategy to arrest the prevailing decadence, namely, Buddhist education, well-planned propaganda and sound organization. These helped to bring back the rights lost by the Buddhists.
In 1880 there were only two schools in Ceylon managed by the Buddhists. Due to the efforts of Olcott the number rose to 205 schools and three colleges in 1907, the year he passed away. It is noteworthy that he did not have a single school named after him.
Col. Olcott, accompanied by an interpreter, travelled in bullock carts to remote villages where thousands crowded to listen to him. He had hardly any rest as people came even at odd hours to meet him.
Finding no book which gave the teachings in simple terms, he compiled The Buddhist Catechism whose Sinhalese and English versions appeared on 24 July 1881, the Âsala Full Moon Day. The hand presses found it difficult to meet the demand. The book has undergone many editions in a number of languages and is still in demand.
Thus began the great Buddhist revival in Ceylon. Col. Olcott then designed the Buddhist flag which is used all over the world as a symbol of religious unity. The flag consists of ‘the six colours’ said to be in the aura of the Buddha. He also represented the Buddhist cause to the British government, and found redress for the restrictions imposed against Buddhists, such as the prohibition of processions, Buddhist schools, the improved financial administration of temple properties, and so on.
Olcott's "Buddhist Catechism", composed in 1881, is one of his most enduring contributions to the revival of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, and remains in use there today. The text outlines what Olcott saw to be the basic doctrines of Buddhism, including the life of the Buddha, the message of the Dharma, the role of the Sangha. The text also treats how the Buddha's message correlates with contemporary society. Olcott was considered by South Asians and others as a Buddhist revivalist.
Olcott's Science and Theosophy
The Theosophists combination of spiritualism and science to investigate the supernatural reflected the society's desire to combine religion and reason and to produce a rationally spiritual movement. This "occult science" within the Theosophical Society was used to find the "truth" behind all of the world's major religions. Through their research, Olcott and Blavatsky concluded that Buddhism best embodied elements of what they found significant in all religions.
Olcott utilized scientific reasoning in his synthesis and presentation of Buddhism. This is clearly seen in a chapter of his "Buddhist Catechism", entitled "Buddhism and Science". Notably, his efforts represent one of the earliest attempts to combine scientific understanding and reasoning with Buddhist religion. The interrelationship he saw between Buddhism and Science paralleled his Theosophical approach to show the scientific bases for supernatural phenomena such as auras, hypnosis, and Buddhist "miracles".
Olcott’s Death
In 1906, on board ship while he was returning from his last American visit, Colonel Olcott fell and received an injury from which he never recovered. Though otherwise his body was in vigorous health, his heart failed from the strain of overwork and he was not able to recuperate. He died the following year, on February 17, 1907, at Adyar.
Closing
Notice the connections. Both Olcott & Blavatsky were Buddhists, both interested in destroying Christianity. Both singled out by the mysterious Master. Who is this Master that set these gears in motion? And why India? 🤔
Notice the Freemason connection.