ABSTRACT
Blavatsky and Olcott’s meeting led to a lasting, if often stormy, friendship and collaboration, the central result of which was the founding, mentioned above, with William Quan Judge, of the Theosophical Society in September 1875. While traditional religion seemed increasingly unable to provide a believable account of human existence, the ever-triumphant rationalist view was heading towards a “non-moral universe,” and declared that the existential questions of human existence – the mysteries of life and death and of good and evil – were either nonsense or unanswerable. The central question regarding the “destiny of man” was that of life after death. As science secured more and more of the territory of “truth” from religion, the idea that there was some existence beyond the grave seemed increasingly doubtful, and this undermined the rest of religion’s edifice, including its moral and ethical commands.
