ety in 1895. He died the next year. Tingley succeeded him,
although the circumstances surrounding her succession re-
main unclear. Over time, many leaders loyal to Judge shifted
their loyalty to her, but not all. Some of the dissenters
formed their own Theosophical groups.
Tingley mobilized Theosophists across the United
States to work for social reform. Theosophists were responsi-
ble for public vegetable gardens, orphanages, halfway houses
for prostitutes, job training for the poor, emergency relief,
and Theosophical Sunday schools for children, which were
originally begun under Judge but expanded under Tingley
and called Lotus Circles. The Theosophical response to
American soldiers returning from Cuba after the Spanish-
American War in 1898 is noteworthy. The United States
Army was not prepared to receive the troops who came home
weak and ill from tropical diseases. At one such disembarka-
tion point on Long Island, Theosophists led by Tingley
staffed a hospital camp where soldiers received food and
medical treatment.
In the late 1890s Tingley and the leadership around her
took steps toward the establishment of a community of like-
minded adults who would provide an education for children
based upon Theosophical principles. They selected Point
Loma as the location for this community. It was a relatively
isolated site a few miles from San Diego, California, with a
mild climate and space to expand facilities. American Theos-
ophists led by Tingley believed that they stood on the cusp
of a new cycle or age in human history. Ancient souls who
had reincarnated countless times in past eons were especially
mature and ready to advance spiritually and morally as they
appeared in this incarnation as children. This promising co-
hort required special nurture, and Point Loma was their nur-
sery. Tingley and other adults at Point Loma strictly con-
trolled their children’s exposure to the outside world, their
diets, their reading material, their physical activities, and
their relationships with one another. This system of child-
rearing and education was called Raja Yoga, a term that the
Theosophists borrowed from Hinduism but invested with
their own meaning. In their worldview, Raja Yoga was the
holistic education of children in which all of their faculties—
spiritual, mental, physical, and emotional—could be culti-
vated simultaneously. From 1900, when Tingley and others
moved to Point Loma, until the community relocated to Co-
vina, California, in 1942, Point Loma Theosophists raised
and educated hundreds of children.
Throughout the first three decades of the twentieth cen-
tury, Tingley made numerous tours of the United States and
the world. She set the tone for such travel in 1896 by visiting
Theosophical lodges worldwide. Thistour, called the Cru-
sade, was designed to consolidate support for her leadership
and establish good working relationships with Theosophists
elsewhere. For many years afterward she traveled avidly, pub-
licizing the Point Loma Theosophical Community and ad-
vocating a number of social and political causes, especially
world peace. During the years immediately preceding World
War I she became a noted national and international figure
in various peace conferences. Even after the American entry
into the war, she continued to advocate peace, and for this
reason briefly attracted the attention of the United States
government as a possible agent for Germany, although suspi-
cion of Tingley’s cooperation with German agents proved
unfounded.
Tingley was a high-profile figure, often in the news be-
cause of remarks she made at public gatherings or in court
cases that included various individuals at Point Loma. Some
of these cases dealt with divorces of married couples, some
with the settlement of estates left behind by deceased Point
Loma residents. In all such instances, Tingley was a witty and
feisty participant, yet she maintained a pronounced Victori-
an respectability consistent with her social class, gender, and
generation.
Tingley was praised by Point Loma Theosophists as the
rightful successor to Blavatsky and Judge as the leader of
world Theosophy, in spite of the opposition to this assertion
by other Theosophical organizations. Theosophists claimed
that their leaders were granted both paranormal abilities and
special authority to teach Theosophical principles by a group
of advanced beings called the masters, who supervised the
great cosmic evolution of souls and worlds. Point Loma The-
osophists believed that, as the sanctioned leader, Tingley
manifested extraordinary powers of prediction and percep-
tion. Her commands were followed without question by
those who revered her. She was seen as the mother of the age,
as well as the mother of people in this age, especially the suf-
fering and destitute. Maternity defined her particular style
of leadership, in contrast to the masculine style of Judge be-
fore her, and the more scholarly style of her successor, Gott-
fried de Purucker (1874–1942). Tingley was a persuasive
speaker in an era when public speakers enjoyed widespread
popularity and influence in American society. Many of her
speeches appeared in the magazines and books printed by
Point Loma’s press. But within the Point Loma Theosophi-
cal tradition, both during and after her lifetime, she was re-
garded as a great organizer and manager, not a scholar. Her
speeches and writings mostly repeated Theosophical ideas al-
ready extant, but she articulated them in a way that appealed
to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Americans.
She evoked patriotic pride as well as concern for all of hu-
manity; advocated gender distinctions as well as common
characteristics of men and women; and argued for children
to be both protected and challenged in their nurture. Her
genius lay in her ability to tap into American folkways and
middle-class discourse about culture, and to intertwine those
with Theosophical doctrine.Tingley was in an automobile accident in Germany in
May 1929. As a result of injuries sustained in that accident,
she died of illness while convalescing on the island of Vising-
so, in Sweden, in July 1929. She was eighty-two years of age.
Today, the organizational descendant of the Point Loma
Theosophical Community is the Theosophical Society, Pasa-9206 TINGLEY, KATHERINE