Judge writings

UNDER CONSTRUCTION
UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Letters of WQJ, compiled by Dara Eklund

Russian edition of WQJ Collected Writings

William Quan Judge was one of the principal Founders of the Theosophical Society. His writings are among the clearest explications of the principles of Theosophy.

Periodicals

Judge served as editor of the periodical, The Path, from 1886-1896. After the American Section of the Theosophical Society was formed on October 30, 1886, The Path became its official journal. Quoting from the first issue, April 1886, Judge gives a reason for producing the publication:

to try on the one hand to point out to their fellows a Path in which they have found hope for man, and on the other to investigate all systems of ethics and philosophy claiming to lead directly to such a path, regardless of the possibility that the highway may, after all, be in another direction from the one in which they are looking.

In 1889 Judge inaugurated a magazine for inquirers – The Theosophical Forum – in which he expressed a deep understanding of the technicalities of Theosophy.

The Union Index of Theosophical Periodicals lists [www.austheos.org.au xxx articles] by or about Mr. Judge, including all those he edited. Articles appeared in The Theosophist, Lucifer, The Theosophist, The Pacific Theosophist (periodical)|The Pacific Theosophist, The Vahan, and the Proceedings of various Theosophical congresses.

Books and pamphlets

• The Yoga Aphorisms of Patañjali. New York, 1889. Produced with the assistance of James Henderson Connelly.
• Echoes from the Orient. 1890. A broad outline of Theosophical tenets that originally appeared in Kate Field's Washington, a (then) new weekly journal published in Washington, D.C., under the pseudonym Occultus.
• The Bhagavad Gita with Essays on the Gita, 1890. It was based on the translation of J. Cockburn Thomson, and is known as the W. Q. Judge recension for its valuable commentaries presented in footnotes. "He also wrote further Notes or Commentaries in The Path, and these were published later in book form." Available at Theosophical University Press Online.
• Letters That Have Helped Me. 1891. Available at Theosophical University Press Online. This is a series of letters written by him in response to questions posed by "Jasper Niemand"

Mrs. Julia Ver Planck Keightley in The Path. A second series of letters was published in 1905 by Jasper Niemand and Thomas Green.

• The Ocean of Theosophy, 1893. Available at Theosophical University Press Online.
• Practical Occultism: From the Private Letters of William Q. Judge, edited by Arthur L. Conger. Available at Theosophical University Press Online.
• Echoes of the Orient: the Writings of William Quan Judge in 4 volumes, edited by Dara Eklund. Available at Theosophical University Press Online.
• Vernal Blooms. Los Angeles, London and Bombay: The Theosophy Company, 1946. A collection of Judge's articles.
• The Heart Doctrine. Los Angeles, London and Bombay: The Theosophy Company, 1951. A collection of Judge's articles.

Online versions of most of Judge's writings at Universal Theosophy website.

Use of pseudonyms

In the style of the day, he employed several pseudonyms in writing his articles in Theosophical journals: Eusebio Urban, Rodriguez Undiano, Hadji Erinn, Willam Brehon, An American Mystic, an others.

He appeared as Occultus in Kate Field's Washington for his Echoes from the Orient series.

In Letters That Have Helped Me, he was designated by the letter Z, and his correspondent had the pseudonym Jasper Niemand.