Blavatsky on Masonry: Jesuit Instigation and Rivalry, Socialism, and her Vision of Ethical Reform

Blavatsky explains her Masonic Diploma, distinction from the operations of Western Masonry and her mission in the East, and her view on the origins of modern Templarism. Blavatsky’s work resists easy co-option into contemporary political myths on any side. The conspiratorial connection between the Templars, Masonry and the Illuminati was invented by the Jesuit priest Abbé Augustin Barruel in his 1797 Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du Jacobinisme as anti-revolutionary propaganda (see Thomas Jefferson’s Enlightenment Republicanism against Illuminati Panic: Letter on Weishaupt’s Perfectibilist Ideal). Barruel likely built off of the work of Chevalier Andrew Michael Ramsay, a Catholic Jacobite with ties to the Jesuits who proposed in his 1736 Oration, that Masonry was descended not from stonemasons but from Crusader chivalric orders.

This article has been heavily revised [formerly titled “Was Blavatsky a 33° Degree Mason”].

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THEOSOPHISTS HAVE BEEN SLANDERED BY PERSONS of right and left political persuasion who dabble in conspiracy theorizing, each accusing the other political side (sometimes both) of being at the helm of world events. In this case, we find common accusations hurled, that this article destroys with no fault. The old conspiracy that RU/UKR Helena Blavatsky (a Buddhist and Theosophist) was a political socialist, that Theosophy leads to Bellamy-style utopian socialism, and that Helena Blavatsky was a 33ʳᵈ degree Mason is laid to rest. This conspiracy, which is not rooted in any fact, was devised to imply Blavatsky and the Theosophical Movement as a “philosophico-religious Society” (HPB’s Scrapbook, Vol. 1, 36; Blavatsky Collected Writings Vol. 1, 90), was part of a heretical, “Luciferian” or world-controlling Judeo-Masonic “cabal,” part of a narrative that has been developed upon since Medieval anti-Jewish writings.

First thing is, Blavatsky was not a political socialist; secondly, Theosophy does not lead to utopian socialism; and thirdly, Helena Blavatsky was not a 33ʳᵈ degree Mason, or associated with regular Freemasonry, as understood in the Western sense. Edward Bellamy, a Christian socialist had been falsely tied to Theosophy by a researcher under the name of Rex Curry, who fails to accurately detail that simply some members of his leagues were adherents of Theosophy. Edward Bellamy’s ideas have been misrepresented. Blavatsky applauded the work of Bellamy and his ideal of the organization of society, who called his idea ‘Nationalism’ of the Mazzinian spirit, promoting the idea of universal brotherhood or fraternity. It is true that early members of the Nationalist Clubs were also members of the Theosophical Society and involved in its activities, but this is misunderstood. Theosophy is seen as the foundation of all movements working towards the great amelioration and true fraternity of humanity — ideas no less expressed since the Catholic Church’s encyclical reactions to the early emergence of Socialism in Europe. Those who followed after Bellamy’s ideas envisioned a spiritual ideal of Socialism that required a great moral and mental stamina.

The facts pertaining to all this annihilates these three myths but also annihilates the Judeo-Masonic-Illuminati myth and challenges the underlying Christian polemical attack. If you have read from any author, or believed Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was a 33ʳᵈ degree Mason, a socialist, or part of any Western secret society plotting world control, you have been lied to by people who never read her 1878 letter addressing this issue or her actual views about Western materialism, Jesuits, Freemasonry and anti-Masonic conspiracism, the Rosicrucians, the Jewish Kabbalah, the roots of Templarism, American and European politics, Masonry’s true origins, the roots or precedents of Church ritualism, and her refutation of Barruel’s Mémoires (1797) Illuminati conspiracy.

Anti-Masons constantly accuse Freemasonry as being the worship of Light as Lucifer, and build from deliberate parsing and misrepresentation of Albert Pike’s thoughts about Lucifer in his magnum opus Morals and Dogma. The metaphysical and scientific dialogue on the origin and nature of Light in this conversation goes way beyond any theology of the Bible, involving an intersection between classical natural philosophy, occult philosophy, metaphysics and modern scientific theories on the categories of physical reality. It is like saying the classical Atomists are Satanists. There are even persons that have claimed to be former “high initiates” of Freemasonry who reveal blood ritualism, abuse, sexual perversion, blackmail and criminality behind lodge activities to conveniently fit typical tropes.

Blavatsky had dismantled the very premises that later conspiracy literature rested upon, from Barruel to Robison to the fabrication of the Protocols and ever-evolving modern Illuminati-Masonic-Jewish narrative. Blavatsky’s analysis is scholarly, historical, and esoteric, rather than political and paranoid.

H.P. Blavatsky had rejected regular membership in Western Masonry, rejected capitalist exploitation, socialism and communism, and identified Theosophy with the systems and lineages of the “Masters of the Orient.”

MASON JOHN YARKER ON HELENA BLAVATSKY’S MASONIC PATENT

Charles Sotheran put before her an honorary diploma (Patent) from John Yarker of the English Sovereign Sanctuary of the Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis-Misraim (often called the “Oriental” or “Egyptian” Rite), an achievement given in honor of her life’s work and service.

The circumstances under which H.P.B. received her Masonic Patent are described as follows by John Yarker who issued it:

“In the year 1872 I printed, at my own cost, a small book entitled, Notes on the Scientific and Religious Mysteries of Antiquity; the Gnosis and Secret Schools of the Middle Ages; Modern Rosicrucianism; and the various Rites and Degrees of Free and Accepted Masonry. At this time, I was Grand Master of the Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis, 95°; and before that of the combined Scottish Rite of 33°, and Mizraim of 90°; and among our initiates, 32°-94°, was Brother Charles Sotheran who left England and settled at New York. This brother lent a copy of the book just named to Madame Blavatsky, and she was good enough to refer to it in her Isis Unveiled, with some complimentary remarks . . .

“However, at the request of Bro. Sotheran I sent Madame Blavatsky the certificate of the female branch of the Sat Bhai (Seven Brothers, or seven birds of a species, which always fly by sevens); it was a system organized at Benares in India by the Pundit of the 43rd Rifles, and brought to England by Major J. H. Lawrence-Archer, 32°-94°. This led to a letter from Col. H. S. Olcott, setting forth the very superior qualities of Madame to the certificate sent, and vouching that she was proficient in all masonic sciences. On the 20th of August, 1877, the, then newly established Theosophical Society of New York sent me by the hands of Col. Cobb a certificate of Honorary membership accompanied by a pretty gold Jewel of the Crux Ansata of Egypt entwined with a serpent in green enamel.

“Both the Rites of Memphis and Mizraim as well as the Grand Orient of France possessed a branch of Adoptive Masonry, popular in France in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and of which, in later years, the Duchess of Bourbon held the rank of Grand Mistress. We accordingly sent H.P.B. on the 24th of November, 1877, a certificate of the highest rank, that of a Crowned Princess 12°, said to have been instituted at Saxe, in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The publication of this certificate led to newspaper questions and attack. The Franklin Register of 1st of February, 1878, contained an article by Bro. Leon Hynemann vouching for the reality of my signature, and another by Bro. Charles Sotheran who vouched for the possession by H.P.B. of Masonic initiation, and this was followed the next week (8th of February) by a slashing article from the pen of Madame herself against her calumniators. . . .” (Universal Masonry, Vol. 1, No. 4, October, 1910)

IN HER OWN WORDS, HELENA BLAVATSKY WAS NEVER A 33ʳᵈ MASON

Blavatsky herself directly addressed and refuted the Masonic claim against her in a public letter published in the Franklin Register and Norfolk County Journal (8 February 1878).

Blavatsky wrote:

“If you will kindly refer to my Isis Unveiled (Vol. II, p. 394), you will find me saying: “We are under neither promise, obligation, nor oath, and therefore violate no confidence”-reference being made to Western Masonry, to the criticism of which the chapter is devoted; and full assurance is given that I have never taken “the regular degrees” in any Western Masonic Lodge. Of course, therefore, having taken no such degree, I am not a thirty-third degree Mason. In a private note, also in your most recent editorial, you state that you find yourself taken to task by various Masons, among them one who has taken thirty-three degrees-which include the “Ineffable”-for what you said about me. My Masonic experience—if you will so term membership in several Eastern Masonic Fraternities and Esoteric Brotherhoods—is confined to the Orient. But, nevertheless, this neither prevents my knowing, in common with all Eastern “Masons,” everything connected with Western Masonry (including the numberless humbugs that have been imposed upon the Craft during the last half century) nor, since the receipt of the diploma from the “Sovereign Grand Master,” of which you publish the text, my being entitled to call myself a Mason.”

“That an American Rite, thus spuriously organized, declines to acknowledge the Patent of an English Sovereign Sanctuary, duly recognized by the Grand Orient of France, does not at all invalidate my claim to Masonic honours. As well might Protestants refuse to call the Dominicans Christians, because the Protestants broke away from the Catholic Church and set up for themselves, as for A. and A. Masons of America to deny the validity of a Patent from an English A. and P. Rite body. Though I have nothing to do with American modern Masonry, and do not expect to have, yet, feeling highly honoured by the distinction conferred upon me by Brother Yarker, I mean to stand for my chartered rights, and to recognize no other authority than that of the high Masons of England, who have pleased to send me this unsolicited and unexpected testimonial of their approval of my humble labours.” (Franklin Register and Norfolk County Journal, Franklin, Mass., February 8, 1878)

Thus, she accepted the honorary diploma but rejected any affiliation with American or European (“modern”) Masonry. This defense can also be read in The Author of Isis Unveiled defends the Validity of her Masonic Patent.

In A Signal of Danger (1889), Blavatsky says that “As far as we are concerned, disciples of the Masters of the Orient as we are, we have nothing to do with modern Masonry.” However, there were many Masons that read and were genuinely interested in her works.

Eastern Masons of the Orient vs. American and European Masonry

The “Eastern Masons of the Orient” vs. “American and European Masonry” is a qualitative distinction Blavatsky made. The “Eastern Masons” are the living initiatory lineages and esoteric brotherhoods (Coptic, Druze, Sufi-influenced and other Oriental fraternities) that preserved the primeval Mystery-tradition and were in contact with the same adepts who inspired Theosophy. These “adepts” were in communication with each from South America to Hungary to the furthest ends of North and South Asia. These are ancient, mainly non-political, wisdom-preserving bodies in the middle of climatic geopolitical changes¹. In reality, many were often reformers, occultists, nationalists, or secret society members whose lives were deeply entangled in that era’s politics, rather than apolitical superhumans. “Modern” (i.e., Western, American, European) Masonry by contrast, is a 17ᵗʰ-19ᵗʰ century revival that she regarded as largely exoteric, politically compromised and riddled with materialists and “numberless humbugs” of the West.

Western Masonry had lost the inner light while retaining the outer forms, and the Masons interested in her writings were eager to restore it. As “disciples of the Masters of the Orient,” Blavatsky had rebutted, that the theosophists had “nothing to do” with the latter. She was embedded in a milieu of reformers, nationalists, and anti-colonial networks in the East, and her work indirectly fueled Indian cultural revival and confidence against colonialism. Blavatsky was aware of the political implications of promoting Eastern wisdom, religious reform (e.g., allying with Arya Samaj), and cultural revival in a colonial context, and the British fears of destabilization fueled surveillance.

Blavatsky and Olcott made pragmatic assurances of non-involvement while pursuing broader goals for the protection of the Theosophical Society, that spiritual regeneration could indirectly support reform or nationalism. Blavatsky saw the Theosophical Society as an agent of spiritual values and allied with useful political and social forces as needed.

As to her thoughts on Masonry, two men, Charles Sotheran and James Sanua, in their different ways, validated Blavatsky’s distinction: Sotheran from the Western Masonic side (granting her the honor), and Sanua who embodied the authentic Oriental current she claimed as her own.

James Sanua (Ya‘qūb Ṣanū‘) was an Egyptian-Jewish playwright, journalist and Oriental Mason initiated in Egyptian lodges with strong Islamic and esoteric syncretism. He exemplifies the “Eastern Masons of the Orient” Blavatsky praised. Sanua moved in the same Cairo esoteric circles Blavatsky knew in the 1870s, and he was a close associate of Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī, a Muslim reformist who was involved in Freemasonry, but for a strategic political reason, that could help him mobilize elites, oppose authoritarian rule, and resist European imperial influence. This is perhaps the reason Blavatsky does not mention him.

Blavatsky repeatedly described herself as acting under direct orders of a specific clandestine network tied to other networks throughout the world. In letters and statements, she portrayed the Theosophical Society and her writings (Isis Unveiled, The Secret Doctrine, etc.) as fulfilling this particular network’s broader mission for humanity’s spiritual regeneration. She emphasized her dedication and devotion to the “great cause” as an intermediary and agent. Even during personal sacrifices, endurance of scandals (like the Coulomb affair), health issues, and public attacks, she remained devoted to this cause, and this was primarily esoteric, spiritual and literary contribution and challenge to the prevailing order.

Blavatsky was able to hold strong personal political opinions on Russian patriotism and critique imperialism, while insisting the Theos. Society remain officially apolitical. As a transmitter, her primary duty was the transmission of esoteric theology of Himalayan and Central Asian origin, and fostering transformation, not partisan activism. Political entanglements were risks to be navigated or leveraged tactically but never allowed to define or derail the core work. Exposing the Masters’ real-world social, political, or reformist ties could have invited suppression, discredited the spiritual message, or violated pledges of secrecy.

Sanua’s Masonry was not the “modern Western” variety but the living, knowledge-based, multi-confessional Oriental current that Blavatsky contrasted with European and American Masonry. While no single letter from Sanua to Blavatsky survives in the public record, his life and Masonic affiliation were cited by later esoteric historians on nineteenth-century Egyptian esotericism as the living proof of the “Eastern Masonic Fraternities” she referenced (see De Poli, Freemasonry and the Orient, 2019).

Charles Sotheran was a high-ranking American Mason, 33ʳᵈ degree and early former in the Theosophical Society’s history who resigned, and then later begged on his knees to Blavatsky (In H.P.B.’s Scrapbook, Vol. I, p. 112) to be permitted back. Sotheran saw Blavatsky as fully entitled to Masonic honors on the strength of her knowledge and her labors in Isis Unveiled.

TRUE ORIGINS OF Masonry IS NOT a Jewish or Satanic Plot

Christian attitudes against modern Theosophy is established through the normative narrative towards Gnosticism, which are founded on lies that sustained the long reign of Christianity in the West. However, contrary to this narrative, Masonry was, in its origin, simply “archaic Gnosticism,” or the complex cosmological and soteriological motifs, Syrian-Egyptian and Hellenic matrix that led to the plethora of early Christian schools. Church Ritualism was, and is, exoteric paganism, pure and simple. Both descend in direct line from initiated Gnostics, Neo-Platonists, and renegade Hierophants, but Masonry preserved the esoteric current while the Church externalized the exoteric pagan rites².

Truth is, there is no “Satanic” or “Luciferian” inner doctrine in Masonry. All “devil-worship” accusations towards Occult Philosophy are the product of Christian militant and fundamentalist misunderstanding of symbolic light, fire and sun-god language in antiquity that actually points to the divine nature in every human being.

In her view, problems in the Masonry of her time stemmed partly from Jesuit infiltration and the introduction of political and ritualistic elements aimed at control. She devoted a section titled “Jesuitry in Masonry” (in Isis Unveiled, Vol. II) to arguing that the Society of Jesus introduced or influenced certain higher degrees and Templar-related rites. She claimed modern Masonic Templarism was fabricated or heavily influenced by Jesuit circles, such as the College of Clermont in Paris (1735-1740), to infiltrate and control the Craft.

She did not attribute Masonry’s degeneration to a “ancient Jewish-Masonic plot.” Her focus was on clerical (especially Jesuit) interference and the loss of genuine esoteric content. John Yarker, a prestigious Masonic scholar and early supporter of Blavatsky, offered additional reasons for the Craft’s decline. Blavatsky quoted him describing Western Masonry as having lost its inner spiritual purpose, becoming hollow and focused on socializing, status, regalia, and superficial display rather than esoteric or moral work.

Yarker warned that Freemasonry risked becoming “a corpse without a soul.”

“Without such a union Western Masonry is a corpse without a soul. As Yarker observes, in his Notes on the Scientific and Religious Mysteries of Antiquity [p. 157]:

“. . . As the Masonic fraternity is now governed, the Craft is fast becoming the paradise of the bon vivant . . . the manufacturer of paltry masonic tinsel . . . and the masonic ‘Emperor’ and other charlatans who make power or money out of the aristocratic pretensions which they have tacked on to our institutions—ad captandum vulgus . . .” (Blavatsky quoting Yarker, The Author of Isis Unveiled defends the Validity of her Masonic Patent)

Yarker’s complaint in Notes on the Scientific and Religious Mysteries of Antiquity (p. 157) was against self-appointed potentates (or “grand” leaders), creators of fake or irregular rites, men who sold degrees for money and people who inflated titles to attract followers. They were both arguing that essentially, Masonry had lost its initiatory, philosophical core.

This core has nothing to do with blood ritual, pedophilia and materialism, but with moral perfectibility.

INSTIGATION OBSTRUCTING THE SPREAD OF THE TRUE WISDOM

From Blavatsky’s perspective, the entire edifice of the conspiracy panics (anti-Masonic, Illuminati, or Judeo-Masonic) often serve as distractions from the main issue of recovering ancient esoteric wisdom versus dreary soul-killing secular materialism and dogmatic clerical exotericism. Unfortunately, the masses are attached to the latter, even as those institutions they trust are publicly and constantly engaged in deceit, perversions, coverups, spiritual fraud, crimes and exploitation of primitive fears.

As to the Bavarian Illuminati, it was a tiny, short-lived anti-clerical club that dissolved decades before Barruel invented his conspiratorial claims. Any later “Illuminati” can only be interpreted as either symbolic in relation to the Eastern Masters and ancient Magi or is a hijacked label. The masses associate the term with political, financial and business elite class who engage in antinomianism, sexual perversity, human trafficking, blackmail, death-threats, war and criminality. This is an inversion, that masses of people refuse to correct.

She regarded the Jewish Kabbalah as a secondary, derivative transmission of older esoteric traditions, and not the primeval origin. She treated it as one current among many (alongside Hindu, Egyptian, etc.) and rejected the idea of a “chosen people” as exoteric invention and viewed claims about the Lost Tribes as rabbinical inventions. Her overall framework prioritizes a “Secret Doctrine” with Eastern roots.

THE GOLDEN ETHICAL REFORM: BLAVATSKY ON SOCIALISM, COMMUNISM AND PRACTICAL ALTRUISM

It was said that Engels did not like the Theosophists and Spiritualists, and although Marx and Blavatsky were contemporaries of their time, they never met. Marx hated Mazzini, while H.P.B. was acquainted with Mazzini and Garibaldi. Her path mirrors Mazzini’s early and later development in his thought on Socialism. Blavatsky sometimes said unflattering things about Socialists, Communists, and predecessors of the Bolsheviks. When the Soviets took over Russia, Theosophy was banned until its fall in a process between 1990-91. In her motherland, the Russian Empire, she made observations of changes that were occurring she felt unsettled by, although she also criticized the Tsar and the Romanovs for neglecting the peasants in her letters. However, this had everything to do with her principles she believed in, rather than a political ideology.

The heart of her fight is against the materialism of modernity (secular, religious, social or economic) and the zombification or dulling of the spiritual, divine nature in man.

As Girard stated in this vein:

“In at most a few decades, we’ll have transformed man [through anti-religious humanism] into a repugnant little pleasure-machine, forever liberated from pain and even from death, which is to say from everything that, paradoxically, encourages us to pursue any sort of noble human aim, and not only religious transcendence.”

René Girard

Blavatsky believed that a spiritual, ethical, psychological revolution was needed and thought that political reforms before this could not fundamentally change humanity. She thought the Communists would make things worse.

“To seek to achieve political reforms before we have effected a reform in human nature, is like putting new wine in old bottles. (…) No lasting political reform can be ever achieved with the same selfish men at the head of affairs as of old.” (Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy, p. 231)

In the first instance Sotheran was kicked out, because he wrote an argument or uncomplimentary remarks toward H.P.B., and he resigned upon being harshly criticized because of political wrangling and unethical ideas after declaring himself a labour Socialist and involving himself in a violent strike (In H.P.B.’s Scrapbook, Vol. VII, p. 258).

“A Theosophist becoming a rioter, encouraging revolution and MURDER, a friend of Communists is no fit member of our Society. HE HAS TO GO.”

The communist believes that this must be achieved by physically overthrowing the selfish men at the head of affairs, and she warns this disguises a will to power, that contributes to the cycle of suffering by giving rise to a new despotic order.

Her views, especially as a Buddhist, is expressed in the Dhammapada (Chapter I, verses 3-5):

“He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me,”–in those who harbour such thoughts hatred will never cease.

“He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me,”–in those who do not harbour such thoughts hatred will cease.

For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule. (The Dhammapada from The Sacred Books of the East, translated by Various Oriental Scholars. Edited by F. Max Muller, Volume X: Part I)

She called Socialism and Communism disguised conspiracies of brutal force against honest labor, though she tolerated an individual’s preference or private belief. Blavatsky believed in, according to her, a nobler and higher ideal of Socialism as a form of practical altruism, strongly firm in the ethics of Jesus and Siddhartha in The Key to Theosophy (Blavatsky, pp. 79-80).

Blavatsky turns the words against her used by her modern slanderers when saying boldly!

“Neither the true Christianity of Jesus – the great Socialist and Adept, the divine man who was changed into an anthropomorphic god – nor the sciences . . . nor the philosophies of today . . . will allow the Occident to attain its full efflorescence if it turns its back upon the ancient wisdom of bygone centuries. . .As long as intellectual progress will refuse to accept a subordinate position to ethical progress, and egotism will not give way to the Altruism preached by Gautama and the true historical Jesus (the Jesus of the pagan sanctuary, not the Christ of the Churches), happiness for all the members of humanity will remain a Utopia.” (Theosophy: Some Rare Perspectives, pp. 8-9)

The manner in which she uses the term Socialism is separated from any political or economic theory but is a reference to the essence of fraternity (or solidarity) and human dignity. She believed that a social revolution could be brought about, but that it must not occur by violent means of force or domination.

She knew Mazzini and Garibaldi in her earlier years and shared some republican and anti-clerical sympathies, but this demonstrates that her mature Theosophical work prioritized spiritual regeneration over political republicanism.

“The “happiness” you speak of will not come as long as moral progress slumbers in inactivity, paralyzed by the ferocious egotism of everybody, the rich as well as the poor (…) false fraternity (…) says to his fellow man, “Think as I do, or I will knock you down; be my brother, or I will run you down!”

“The Theosophical “missionaries” aim also at a social revolution. But it is a wholly ethical revolution. It will come about when the disinherited masses understand that happiness is in their own hands, that wealth brings nothing but worries, that he is happy who works for others, for those others work for him, and when the rich realize that their felicity depends upon that of their brothers – whatever their race or religion – then only will the world see the dawn of happiness.” (Blavatsky, Misconceptions, Theosophy: Some Rare Perspectives, p. 19-20)

DE-CENTERING ABRAHAMIC RELIGIONS

These facts alone constitute the 33ʳᵈ degree myth about Blavatsky as now dead. However, the bigger conspiracy edifice of the Illuminati panic, Templar-Masonic connection first invented by Abbé Augustin Barruel (a Jesuit priest) and the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy of the Protocols³ still needs burying. Judaism, Christianity and Islam see themselves each as the center of the human story. Jews are seen as transmitters of a concentrated narrative, not originators of the Secret Doctrine. Their sodalites produced a noble esoteric current (Kabbalah) Judaism contained both an esoteric, speculative tradition preserved by priestly and scholarly circles, and an exoteric, communal religious tradition centered on covenant, law, and national identity. Over time, the esoteric current contributed to the development of Kabbalah, while the exoteric current shaped the public religious life. Early Israelite religion emerged within the West Semitic/Canaanite/Mesopotamian religious milieu centered on a national tutelary deity subsuming the qualities of the gods of those regions through syncretism, erasure, omission and constant revision. The religion became increasingly monolatrous, then monotheistic

EXPLOITATION OF AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN CONSPIRATORIAL PARANOIA

Americans seem to be very ignorant when it comes to this history, since without the republican networks in this history, you would still be under a monarchy. Hardened, when presented with the facts, people refuse to correct their position, because their positions are too tied into certain Christian views of eschatological prophecy and who they are told are the enemies in a narrative that centers Christianity in the story of humanity, which Theosophy does not. In Barruel’s 1797 Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du Jacobinisme, the early roots of Illuminati conspiracy begin as anti-revolutionary propaganda.

It is because Barruel was a Jesuit priest, that Blavatsky grounds her thesis on the fact that the entire conspiracy edifice rests on Jesuit-orchestrated scaremongering that is self-serving fiction for political theater and control of mass opinion.

“The greater part of the population is not very intelligent, dreads responsibility, and desires nothing better than to be told what to do. Provided the rulers do not interfere with its material comforts and its cherished beliefs, it is perfectly happy to let itself be ruled.”

ALDOUS HUXLEY

The real danger to humanity is the invention of and attachment to ecclesiastical rites, materialism and dogmatic orthodox Religion suppressing esoteric knowledge and instigating. This article is meant to antagonize Christianity, because its place, as well as Judaism and Islam in the entire human story are not told truthfully and has been designed to obscure the historical facts.

The American has been within this history conditioned through a bewildering series of conspiracies to fight against their own form of government and fight for clerical, traditionalist, messianic, monarchic and theocratic (Christocratic) visions⁴ of exploiters in our government, which it was explicitly founded against through REPUBLICANISM — a vital key to its regeneration. Even if this country were to collapse and fall into the wrong hands, REPUBLICANISM would still be its ultimate means for regeneration, so it is important to understand it. To understand it, one must be willing to challenge the whole edifice of the generally anti-gnostical conspiratorial narrative and attitude, because humanity both elite and the vulnerable appear lost in a fog of spiritual darkness and bewilderment, repeating old errors.

Chevalier Ramsay and Barruel’s Theories on Masonic Origins

The conspiratorial connection between the Templars, Masonry and the Illuminati was invented by the Jesuit priest Abbé Augustin Barruel in his 1797 Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du Jacobinisme as anti-revolutionary propaganda (see Thomas Jefferson’s Enlightenment Republicanism against Illuminati Panic: Letter on Weishaupt’s Perfectibilist Ideal). Barruel likely built off of the work of Chevalier Andrew Michael Ramsay, a Catholic Jacobite with ties to the Jesuits who proposed in his 1736 Oration, that Masonry was descended not from stonemasons but from Crusader chivalric orders.

The 1790s panic (Barruel’s Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du Jacobinisme, 1797) claimed the French Revolution was the work of a Templar-Illuminati-Masonic conspiracy. Blavatsky traces the very idea of a Templar-Masonic connection back to Barruel himself who treats it as a historical curiosity. Blavatsky argued, that modern Masonic Templarism “was hatched in a Jesuit College” in her work, Roots of Ritualism and on secret societies in Isis Unveiled. The real danger, in her view, was materialism, dogmatic literalist Christianity and ecclesiastical authority, and the corruption and suppression (or inversion) of occult knowledge into perverse esotericism (or left-hand practice). In this view, materialism destroys spiritual perception, institutional dogmatic religion replaces inner knowledge with external authority and corrupted esotericism weaponizes spiritual knowledge for ego and power. Together, they create a world where true esoteric knowledge is lost, humanity becomes spiritually blind, occult forces are misused and civilization declines into conflict and confusion. She believed that the Jesuits were the intellectual arm of Catholic dogmatism and were the counter‑pole to the esoteric Brotherhood she claimed to represent.

The Judeo-Masonic “Protocols” conspiracy post-dates Blavatsky by over a decade, but she anticipates the ideological groundwork, refuting it in advance. The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (fabricated c. 1903) alleged a Jewish-Masonic cabal seeking global domination. Blavatsky’s entire corpus is the antithesis to this political myth, and any attempt to rope Theosophy into a “Judeo-Masonic” narrative collapses, because she repeatedly states Theosophists “have nothing to do with modern Masonry” and she never joined a regular Western lodge. The Protocols appeared after her death, and every premise they rest upon is demolished in Isis Unveiled, The Secret Doctrine, and Roots of Ritualism.

As to the Bavarian Illuminati, Blavatsky does not directly address or equate herself with Adam Weishaupt or endorse his Bavarian Illuminati in relation to Templarism. She never mentions Weishaupt by name in her writings on Masonry and ritualism. However, there is a clear parallel in their shared anti-Jesuit, anti-Vatican stance. Weishaupt (a former Jesuit seminarian and canon-law professor at Ingolstadt, a Jesuit stronghold) founded the short-lived Bavarian Illuminati (1776-1785) explicitly to combat Jesuit influence in education, promote Enlightenment rationalism, and undermine clerical power in Bavaria. Blavatsky, writing a century later, repeatedly portrays the Jesuits as the primary corruptors of both Church and Masonry — using infiltration, forged rites, and political machination for Vatican control. Blavatsky clearly laments the Church’s reform and absorption of the Society of Jesus. Her critique of “Jesuitry” mirrors Weishaupt’s anti-clerical motive.

Her views on the Rosicrucians fit as a positive counterpoint to the Illuminati panic. Blavatsky treats the original Rosicrucians as authentic esoteric preservers of ancient wisdom connected to alchemy, the “lost word,” and the same Mystery-tradition as true Masonry and her “Eastern Masons of the Orient.” She notes approvingly that Elias Ashmole (a key seventeenth-century figure) was “the first operative Mason of any consequence, and the last of the Rosicrucians and Alchemists,” and that “no one could ever lay hands on the Rosicrucians; their true aims are to this day a mystery” (Blavatsky, Jesuitry in Masonry, pp. 8, 41).

Blavatsky’s own chapters from Isis Unveiled (Vol. II, ch. VIII, “Jesuitry and Masonry,” 1877) and the standalone compilation argues, that modern Masonic Templarism was hatched in a Jesuit College. Higher degrees were constructed, and she believed, that no Masonic rite was free from the influence of the Jesuit College of Clermont at Paris in her time. The Jesuits, she stated had accomplished but one of their designs, which was in denaturalizing and bringing into disrepute the Masonic Institution.

“Having succeeded, as they believed, in destroying it in one form, they were determined to use it in another. … we see these pseudo-Templars, under the guidance of the worthy Father Jesuits, forging in Paris, 1806, the famous charter of Larmenius.” (Jesuitry in Masonry, p. 45, Philaletheians UK)

“That bastard foundling of Freemasonry, the ‘Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite,’ … was the enunciation, primarily, of the brain of the Jesuit Chevalier Ramsay.” (ibid, p. 51)

Chevalier Andrew Michael Ramsay was a Catholic Jacobite with ties to the Jesuits. This idea appeared in Isis Unveiled (1877), where she argues that many high‑degree Masonic systems were shaped by Christian or Jesuit influences rather than ancient esoteric traditions. She regarded the Scottish Rite as a later development rather than a true survival of ancient mysteries. Ramsay’s famous 1736 Oration proposed that Masonry was descended not from stonemasons but from Crusader chivalric orders. In Orations, he advances the idea of a hierarchical, aristocratic structure with Chivalric and Knightly degrees. Blavatsky interprets this as the seed of the later Scottish Rite. Its resemblance to Catholic ceremonialism as taken as evidence that the Rite is not ancient, but a later Christianized graft.

Albert Pike’s work can be interpreted as an attempt to solve that problem, by infusing genuine esoteric philosophy into the Rite’s system and overlaying it with similar substance to Blavatsky’s efforts.

However, if Blavatsky believed the Scottish Rite was a Jesuit‑influenced distortion of true Masonry, and Pike and Blavatsky drew from the same esoteric library, this creates a paradox, because Pike was the chief architect of the Scottish Rite’s modern form. Pike was an anti-papal republican thinker in the classical American sense, stating in Morals and Dogma the dream of establishing “all over the world the New Law and Reign of Love, Peace, Charity, and Toleration…” This universalist moral rhetoric of Pike came from his esoteric philosophy, while his racism came from his nineteenth‑century Southern political identity. These two worldviews unfortunately never fully integrated but coexisted in contradiction as noted in The Conflicted Albert Pike: Early Years Anti-Slavery Whig to Secessionist and Masonic Scholar.

On spurious Templar claims, she stated:

“All these asseverations, unsupported by history, were fabricated in the High Chapter of Clermont [Jesuits] … preserved by the Parisian Templars as a legacy left them by those political revolutionists, the Stuarts and the Jesuits.” (ibid, p. 42)

“The frantic denunciations of the Craft by Catholic and Protestant writers appear simply ridiculous, as also the affirmation of the Abbé Barruel that everything ‘betrays our Freemasons as the descendants of those proscribed Knights Templars’ of 1314.” (ibid, p. 32)

This follows her belief that Jesuits had a long‑standing strategy to infiltrate esoteric or secret societies, reshape them into Christianized, obedience‑based systems and neutralize their “pagan,” “hermetic,” or “occult” elements.

She never once attributes Masonry’s degeneration to any “Jewish” source, but to Jesuits introducing “ecclesiastical rites,” “anthropomorphic theology,” and political tools (regicide, high treason). She cites Jesuit authors approving murder of kings and statesmen. Keep in mind, these eras of Christendom, the means by which the Church took throughout its history to maintain its power, and the history of the revolutions we are a product of.

The primary-sources quoted are unassailable, and conspiracists citing Blavatsky to “prove” an Illuminati-Judeo-Masonic plot are directly contradicted by her own words in the very texts they cherry-pick. The Jesuit fabrication of the panic, the Jesuit hatching of modern Templarism, and her elevation of Eastern and Rosicrucian esotericism over any political cabal rejects the modern myth.

THE JEWISH SECRET DOCTRINE VERSUS THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES

The core thesis of Blavatsky’s writings is that the primeval Secret Doctrine originated in the East and was transmitted westward in increasingly distorted forms. The Jews are not the originators or custodians of this primordial Wisdom-Religion but late, secondary transmitters. The true “Sod” (סוד, Mysteries) of the Jews is not original, but identical with the universal Mysteries of the pagans, ultimately traceable to the East. Her focus remains uncompromisingly Eastern, in stating that “the Kabala is derived directly from the primeval Secret Doctrine of the East; through the Vedas, the Upanishads, Orpheus and Thales, Pythagoras and the Egyptians.” (Blavatsky, Theosophical Glossary, s.v. “Kabalist.” In Isis Unveiled, Vol. I, p. 135). She also explains that their kabalistic ‘secret doctrine’ may be traced in each detail to its primeval source — to Upper India, or Turkestan.

“Now in the original, the words ‘their secret’ really are ‘their SOD.’ And Sod was the name for the great mysteries of Baal, Adonis and Bacchus… [It] was the name given to the tribe of Levi… and Moses was the chief of the Sodales.” (Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. II, p. 202, fn.)

The Jewish Secret Doctrine is identical to those of the Pagan Greeks, who took them from the Egyptians and admit it, who borrowed from Chaldeans, who got them from the Indo-Aryans and so on (see Blavatsky, The Secrecy of Initiates).

“There was at all times a Kabbalistic literature among the Jews, though historically it can be traced only from the time of the Captivity. Yet, from the Pentateuch down to the Talmud, the documents of that literature were ever written in a kind of Mystery-language, a series of symbolical records which the Jews had copied from the Egyptian and the Chaldæan Sanctuaries, only adapting them to their own national history.” (Blavatsky, Collected Writings, XIV, pp. 192-205, in her writings on Zohar, p. 8).

“It is now becoming apparent that the Kabbalah of the Jews is but the distorted echo of the Secret Doctrine of the Chaldæans, and that the real Kabbalah is found only in the Chaldean Book of Numbers, now in the possession of certain Persian Sufis.” (Ibid., p. 12). The Tanaim (early Jewish kabalists, 3rd c. BCE) preserved a doctrine “identical with that of the Chaldeans, and includes at the same time much of the Persian wisdom.” (Isis Unveiled, Vol. I, p. xxxiv; Theosophical Glossary, s.v. “Kabalist”).

The Jewish religion “never had more than three keys out of the seven” (astronomical, numerical, anthropological or physiological), resulting in what Blavatsky calls “the most phallic religion of all,” but modern “Kabbalistic speculation is on a par with modern ‘speculative Masonry’.”

THE LESSON IN BLAVATSKY’S CRITIQUE OF JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Blavatsky’s critique of Judaism operates through a precise ontological scalpel, where she severs the living esoteric core from its exoteric shell, treating the latter not as an ethnic failing, but as a degenerative historical process that turns universal wisdom into tribal enclosure. At its heart lies the figure of Jehovah, whom she reframes as a localized, anthropomorphic potency alternately passive in the primordial chaos or aggressively phallic when masculinized, rather than the boundless Ain-Soph (the Hebrew Parabrahman) that Theosophy equates with the impersonal Absolute.

The Pentateuch, under this reading, dissolves into a layered astronomical-physiological allegory whose surface narrative glorifies national exclusivity while its hidden grammar celebrates the union of sexes. Exoteric Judaism thus becomes the paradigmatic case of a once-noble tradition collapsing into literalism, jealousy, and territorial deity-worship, mirroring the very degradations Blavatsky elsewhere diagnoses in institutional Christianity or late Brahmanism.

The doctrine of a “chosen people,” the assertion of an unmediated divine revelation, and the messianic exclusivity tied to a single historical lineage are exposed as late rhetorical inventions designed to sacralize tribal cohesion. Historical and linguistic scrutiny reinforces the verdict: the twelve tribes lack any independent corroboration in ancient historiography; the scriptures themselves betray repeated editorial layers reaching into the post-exilic period; and the Hebrew tongue, far from primordial, shows no monumental trace before its relatively late emergence.

The Kabbalistic keys retained by Jewish initiates, Blavatsky argues, were sufficient to preserve fragments of phallic symbolism, but insufficient to recover the full septenary system of the primeval tradition. The promised Messiah is therefore reinterpreted as a collective emergence or epiphany of divine wisdom in the far future, not a partisan deliverer for any single ethnicity who reigns under a divine-right kingship under the full imperial glory of Israel. Crucially, these strictures are never permitted to slide into ethnic animus. Blavatsky’s own biography show that she studied under initiated Palestinian rabbis, held a lifelong friendship with a “first and dearest” Hebrew mentor, and highlighted the visible presence of Jewish members in the Theosophical Society (see Blavatsky articles titled “Doomed” and “Tetragrammaton”). Her target is the exoteric distortion, the same phenomenon she indicts when it appears in any tradition: the hardening of symbol into dogma, the contraction of universal light into national boundary. The critique is therefore symmetrical and non-hierarchical in its moral application.

Re-situating the narrative in the East (Indo-Aryan, Indo-Iranian, Chinese, etc) moves Jewish esotericism out of any position or claim to original or true divine revelation.

Kabbalah and Masonry preserve authentic fragments, yet they remain derivative. This placement collapses attempts to conscript Blavatsky into conspiratorial narratives of “Judeo-Masonic” dominance. Instead, her system universalizes the Wisdom-Religion, demotes every exoteric tribalism (Jewish or otherwise) to a transient cultural artifact. In this light, her critique is neither antisemitic nor philo-Semitic but rigorously metaphysical. It measures every historical religion against the yardstick of an impersonal, pre-ethnic primordial tradition and finds the exoteric forms wanting precisely to the degree they forget their older, universal origin.

Therefore, in this view, the concept of chosen people, exclusive monotheism and literal revelation are exoteric inventions, and Jewish messianic exclusivism is rejected. These positions collapse any attempt to co-opt Blavatsky into “Judeo-Masonic” or antisemitic narratives, as she universalizes ancient wisdom, and exposes the minority report and the tribalism derived from it to super-impose back onto human history as a distortion.

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FOOTNOTES

1. see Political Operations in Cairo and Cyprus: Meeting Hilarion and Ooton Liatto. ↩︎
2. See Blavatsky’s Roots of Ritualism and Isis Unveiled, Vol. II. ↩︎
3. For now, read Maurice Joly: Origins of the Protocols of Zion and its Impact on Theosophy. ↩︎
4. See Christian nationalist congressman Rep. Andy Ogles post using Templar imagery. These are spiritual pretenders with no knowledge. ↩︎