The Dawn of the New Cycle: Point Loma Theosophists and American Culture

Author(s): W. Michael Ashcraft

Source: Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Vol. 10, No. 1
(August 2006), pp. 127-128
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/nr.2006.10.1.127
Accessed: 27-06-2016 04:53 UTC

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NR1001 6/6/06 15:38 Page 127

Reviews

The Dawn of the New Cycle: Point Loma Theosophists and American Culture. By
W. Michael Ashcraft. University of Tennessee Press, 2002. xviii + 258
pages. $35.00 cloth.

The cornerstone of the Point Loma Theosophical community near

San Diego was laid in February 1897, and the community continued to
develop and prosper until the death of its founder, Katherine Tingley
(1847–1929). W. Michael Ashcraft’s study offers an intriguing example
of the depth a religious historian can achieve through the layering of
several religious and cultural contexts. Ashcraft addresses the major
questions of his study—why late Victorian, white middle class Americans
found Theosophy so inspiring, why they gave up so much to live at
Point Loma, what their choices tell us about American society then and
now—by placing Point Loma within the broader frameworks of Western
esotericism, late nineteenth-century Victorian culture, and communi-
tarianism. It is this multi-faceted approach that makes Ashcraft’s study
appealing and useful not just for students of American religions and
new religions, but for anyone interested in the social and gender history
of communal groups

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NR1001 6/6/06 15:38 Page 128

Nova Religio

The first three chapters provide background about these three influ-
ences as well as about the Theosophical Society in the late nineteenth
century, Katherine Tingley herself, and the Point Loma Theosophists.
The last five chapters address particular topics: child rearing and edu-
cation, the meanings of “womanhood” and “manhood,” and the demands
of “higher patriotism” in response to the Spanish-American war and
World War I. In these latter chapters, Ashcraft uses a consistent organi-
zational strategy that reinforces the contextually layered effect: an intro-
ductory anecdote from Point Loma; a brief historical framework, for
example, on child rearing, women and men in nineteenth-century
America and American exceptionalism and its symbols; a survey of ear-
lier Theosophical approaches to these concerns; and the issues as
reflected upon and lived out at Point Loma.
Ashcraft makes a creative contribution to the study of Point Loma
and to Theosophy in general by paying close attention to the issue of
gender roles and the raising of children. He does not collapse gender
and sexual practice into each other as sometimes happens in the study
of new religions. He negotiates the tensions between the distinctive-
ness of Theosophical teachings and the expectations of the broader
culture. Point Loma residents assumed that they must consciously pre-
pare children for “the dawn of the new cycle” by cultivating selfless
behavior and control of their “lower natures.” At the same time boys and
girls were educated with attention to the qualities Victorian culture deemed
appropriate for each gender. Likewise, the anticipation of the new cycle
anticipated a re-infusion of the feminine principle into the workings of
the cosmos and a spiritualization of the masculine, but assumptions
about what characteristics constituted the “higher woman” and the “gen-
tleman Theosophist” were derived as much from Victorian culture as
from Theosophical beliefs. In demonstrating not just the particularities
of the Point Loma community but its inter-connections with the culture
that gave rise to it, Ashcraft does not let readers forget the complexities
of a community that upheld those cultural values at some points and
worked to subvert them at others.
Mary Farrell Bednarowski, United Theological Seminary of the Twin
Cities

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