College of benefactors 2010-11

The Blavatsky Trust

Sunday 23 January 11:30am

Thanks to the work of the Blavatsky Trust, the University of Exeter has been able to participate in a major innovation within the humanities: the establishment of a new academic subject with many interdisciplinary opportunities, namely Western Esotericism. With their philosophical and religious roots in late antiquity and flowering in the Renaissance, the Western esoteric traditions of Neoplatonism, Hermeticism, astrology, alchemy, Kabbalah and theosophy re-entered public discourse through the modern occult revival in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Over the past two decades, Western Esotericism has been established as a postgraduate subject at three universities: the Sorbonne, Paris, since the early 1990s; Amsterdam since 2000; and the University of Exeter since 2005. The academic field is rapidly expanding with research, publications, peer-reviewed journals, conferences, and teaching programmes.

The Blavatsky Trust is named after Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891), a Russian noblewoman and the co-founder of the Theosophical Society at New York in 1875, itself instrumental in a major revival of interest in Western esoteric traditions. The Blavatsky Trust was the joint vision of Geoffrey Farthing (1909 – 2004), Christmas Humphreys (1901– 1983) and Graham Nicholas. Christmas Humphreys was a distinguished barrister, Circuit Judge, Shakespeare scholar, and founder of the Buddhist Society in 1924. He was a prolific author on Buddhist and Theosophical subjects. His co-founder, Geoffrey Farthing, was General Secretary of the Theosophical Society from 1969 – 1972 and Director of its European School. The Blavatsky Trust was founded on 15 November 1974 with the following principal object:

“To advance education in and promote or further the study of, or research into religion, philosophy and science, and to disseminate the results of such study and research to the public”.

Geoffrey Farthing considered that this object would be best served within an academic setting. To this end he and his fellow Trustee, Colin Price, set up a Research Fellowship which has since been succeeded by the establishment of the Chair in Western Esotericism at the University of Exeter in 2005. Since then, the Blavatsky Trust has most generously supported the Chair in Western Esotericism at Exeter, enabling the establishment of the Exeter Centre for the Study of Esotericism, a part-time distance-learning MA course in Western Esotericism, and a flourishing PhD programme. The current chair-holder has written a text-book for the subject, The Western Esoteric Traditions (Oxford University Press, 2008) as well as a book-series and journal articles on major figures in the pageant of Western Esotericism: Ramon Lull, Marsilio Ficino, Paracelsus, John Dee, Jacob Boehme, Emanuel Swedenborg, Madame Blavatsky, and G. R. S. Mead.