Printed in the Fall 2025 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Smoley, Richard "From the Editors Desk" Quest 113:4, pg 2
This is the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Theosophical Society, which took place in New York on November 17, 1875.
To commemorate this event, we have made this a 150th anniversary issue. It would be impossible to comb through all of the Theosophical publications from the whole of the Society’s history and select articles that would fit into a single issue of Quest. So we have decided to use this issue as a retrospective on Quest itself.
In the autumn of 1988, the TSA launched The Quest: A Quarterly Journal of Philosophy, Science, Religion, and the Arts, which was designed for sale to the general public. It did not entirely replace its predecessor, The American Theosophist, which continued as a bimonthly members-only journal. The American Theosophist was replaced by The Messenger in 1994. Edited by John Algeo, then president of the TSA, it was “a combination newsletter and study paper” that was sent to members of the Theosophical Society.
This practice—having dual publications, one magazine for widespread circulation and a members-only journal—continued until 1998. Up to that point, The Quest had accepted outside ads, but at that time it ceased to do so. The magazine was no longer available on the newsstands. Circulation was through subscriptions only: to members, who received it as part of their membership privileges, as well as to outside subscribers. This policy continues to this day, although the vast majority of recipients are now members. The Messenger continued as an occasional newsletter to serve housekeeping functions of the TSA, such as notifying members of elections and board resolutions.
In June 2008, I was brought on as executive editor of The Quest (I’m currently editor). Some changes seemed to be in order. In the first place, the definite article in the title seemed superfluous; in the second place, the subtitle needed to reflect what the magazine had become. So the name was changed to Quest: Journal of the Theosophical Society in America. Then-president Betty Bland and I implemented these changes at the end of 2008.
In 2010, we were fortunate to engage the services of Drew Stevens as art director, and he has ably served in that capacity since. As you can see if you look through the issues from that time on, he updated the interior design as well as the logo. Up to this point, Quest had remained completely black-and-white. At Drew’s suggestion, we introduced limited color sections in 2010 to improve the magazine’s appearance and appeal.
The dual-publication policy started to seem increasingly pointless as time went on, so in 2018, we eliminated The Messenger entirely and incorporated its functions into Quest. (That’s why, for example, you see our annual report to members at the back of this issue.) We used the cost savings to make Quest entirely full-color. We believe that this has improved its look enormously. (Coincidentally, Nancy Grace came on as managing editor in spring 2018 and has been invaluable since.)
All-color issues serve another function: they open much wider vistas for incorporating art, which we have increasingly done in recent years. As you may have noticed, we give preference to artworks that either have sacred themes or are of Theosophical inspiration.
The latter choice gives us a wide latitude: the abstract art movement of the twentieth century was launched by a treatise called On the Spiritual in Art, written by the Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky in 1910. Kandinsky’s vision was inspired by images drawn from clairvoyant visions of C.W. Leadbeater and Annie Besant in their books Man Visible and Invisible and Thought-Forms. Kandinsky expounded the use of pure color and abstract shapes, rather than representational forms, to express and evoke deeper levels of feeling. So you could argue that all abstract art is ultimately inspired by Theosophy.
In the seventeen years I have been here, we have attempted to strike a sensitive balance between material that relates directly to the Theosophical tradition and subjects with a wider appeal. I believe that this approach has been successful. Of course final judgment lies with you.
I will remark on one change that I implemented when I started this job: I changed this column, “From the Editor’s Desk,” from a rehash of what readers were about to see in the issue into something closer to a conventional editorial, in which I’ve expressed my own perspectives. To me, it has always seemed ridiculous to have an introduction by the editor saying what was quite obvious from the table of contents, but that is what many if not most magazines do. I doubt that many readers of these magazines pay the slightest attention to those introductions.
In any event, the opinions on this page are very much my own. They are by no means to be confused with Quest’s editorial policy. The masthead of every issue says, “The Theosophical Society in America is not responsible for any statement in this magazine by anyone, unless contained in an official document of the Society. The opinions of all writers are their own.” That includes me.
For the reasons stated above, I will not go into details about the articles we have selected for this issue: they ought to speak for themselves. But I believe that they represent superior examples of what Quest has delivered in the nearly forty years of its existence.
Richard Smoley