The colorful history of the Theosophical Society in America. Although Helena P. Blavatsky and Henry S. Olcott founded the Theosophical Society in New York in 1875, they left the country in 1878 for India, where they established the international headquarters. It might seem that the three short years would not be long enough to establish firm roots here, yet by 1886 there were 14 branches in cities as far flung as St. Louis, Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The American Section was formally chartered in 1886, and this book was published in 1987 -- a century as full of events and change for the Society as for the country itself.

In considering a group that identified with Victorian American culture and its anxieties while adhering to an occult worldview that most of their contemporaries found strange, if not dangerous, the book explains why these middle-class Americans found Theosophy so persuasive and why they left family and friends behind to take up residence at this California settlement."--BOOK JACKET.