Occult American: Olcott celebrated on a 1967 postage stamp in Sri Lanka.

Henry Steel Olcott: Timeline of an Occult Pioneer

Mitch Horowitz
9 min readDec 31, 2022

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The life story of American occultist Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907) has all the twists and turns of Harry Potter novel. But its plot is real.

If you can follow Olcott’s career, you can follow much of the development of occult, New Age, Eastern, and esoteric spirituality in the modern world. I have created this timeline to provide students, scholars, journalists, and…

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Mitch Horowitz

"Treats esoteric ideas & movements with an even-handed intellectual studiousness"-Washington Post | PEN Award-winning historian | Censored in China