Origins & history

The Society was constituted in New York on 17 November 1875. In 1879 Blavatsky and Olcott relocated to India, and in 1882 the international headquarters was established at Adyar, near Madras, where it remains. After Blavatsky’s death in 1891 the organisation fractured. The principal modern bodies tracing their descent from the original society are the Theosophical Society Adyar (the largest), the Theosophical Society Pasadena, and the United Lodge of Theosophists.

The Society’s influence outran its membership. Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy split from the German section in 1912–13. The Liberal Catholic Church, the Order of the Star in the East (which proclaimed the young Jiddu Krishnamurti as a coming world teacher, until Krishnamurti dissolved it in 1929), and much of what later became known as the New Age movement all trace lines back to Theosophical work.