THE ATLAS OF THE SOCIETY THAT SPLICED

Henry Steel Olcott

Olcott

nature

American Civil War colonel, agricultural journalist and lawyer who investigated fraud for the War Department — then co-founded the Theosophical Society and served as its first president until his death. The organiser to Blavatsky's visionary.

The strongest single item on the credit side of this bench, and it has nothing to do with the Kabbalah. In 1880 he and Blavatsky took the Refuges and Precepts in Sri Lanka; he then spent decades on the Sinhalese Buddhist revival — founding schools, writing a Buddhist Catechism, and campaigning against the colonial restrictions on Buddhist practice. He is honoured in Sri Lanka to this day.

rhymes with

sephirahchesed

whyChesed is the expansive open hand — the impulse to give, to found, to include. It is also where boundaries dissolve too readily, and both are Olcott.