The Luciferian Public Sphere: Theosophy and Editorial Seekership in the 1880s

Citation

Ferguson C (2020) The Luciferian Public Sphere: Theosophy and Editorial Seekership in the 1880s. Victorian Periodicals Review, 53 (1), pp. 76-101. https://doi.org/10.1353/vpr.2020.0012

Abstract
This article demonstrates the development and practice of "editorial seekership" during the early years of the prominent British Theosophical journal Lucifer, when it was co-edited by H.P. Blavatsky and Mabel Collins. Rather than promoting a particular set of occult beliefs, Lucifer instead encouraged an open-ended and sometimes self-defeatingly anarchic mode of spiritual seekership perfectly aligned to the eclecticism, seriality, and topicality of the periodical form. In demonstrating the editorial team's production of a press-mediated form of spiritual identity, my article calls for a new recognition of the occult revival’s relationship to print capitalism, and of the importance of periodicals to esotericism studies more broadly.

Journal
Victorian Periodicals Review: Volume 53, Issue 1

People

Professor Christine Ferguson

Professor in English, English Studies