"I will point out the greatest, the chief cause of nearly two thirds of the evils that pursue humanity ever since that cause became a power. It is religion under whatever form and in whatsoever nation. It is the sacerdotal caste, the priesthood and the churches..." (Mahatma Letters, p. 57, #10)

"Ignorance created Gods and cunning took advantage of opportunity. Look at India and look at Christendom and Islam, at Judaism and Fetichism. It is priestly imposture that rendered these Gods so terrible to man; it is religion that makes of him the selfish bigot, the fanatic that hates all mankind out of his own sect without rendering him any better or more moral for it. It is belief in God and Gods that makes two-thirds of humanity the slaves of a handful of those who deceive them under the false pretence of saving them. ...The Irish, Italian and Slavonian peasant will starve himself and see his family starving and naked to feed and clothe his padre and pope. For two thousand years India groaned under the weight of caste, Brahmins alone feeding on the fat of the land, and to-day the followers of Christ and those of Mahomet are cutting each other's throats in the names of and for the greater glory of their respective myths. Remember the sum of human misery will never be diminished unto that day when the better portion of humanity destroys in the name of Truth, morality, and universal charity, the altars of their false gods." (Mahatma Letters, p. 58, #10)

"The Bible, from Genesis to Revelations, is but a series of historical records of the great struggle between white and black Magic, between the Adepts of the right path, the Prophets, and those of the Left, the Levites, the clergy of the brutal masses... That there were two schools of Magic, and the orthodox Levites did not belong to the holy one, is shown in the words pronouced by the dying Jacob. (Secret Doctrine II, p. 211)

"The struggle of Bel and then of Merodach, the Sun-god, with Tiamat, the Sea and its Dragon, a 'war' which ended in the defeat of the latter, has a purely cosmic and geological, meaning as well as an historical one. It is a page torn out of the History of the Secret and Sacred Sciences, their evolution, growth, and DEATH - for the profane masses... It relates... to the as systematic persecution of the Prophets of the Right Path by those of the Left. The latter, having inaugurated the birth and evolution of the sacerdotal castes, have finally led the world into all these exoteric religions, invented to satisfy the depraved tastes of the 'hoi polloi' and the ignorant for ritualistic pomp and the materialization of the ever immaterial and Unknowable Principle." (Secret Doctrine II, p . 503)

Neo-Theosophy:

"Theosophy: As the origin and basis of all religions, it cannot be the antagonist of any; it is indeed their purifier, revealing the valuable inner meaning of much that has become mischievous in its external presentation by the perverseness of ignorance and the accretions of superstition; but it recognizes and defends itself in each, and seeks in each to unveil its hidden wisdom. No man in becoming, a Theosophist need cease to be a Christian, a Buddhist, a Hindu; he will but acquire a deeper insight into his own faith."[2] (Annie Besant, Ancient Wisdom, pp. 4-5)

"If he is on God's side he is one of us, and it does not matter in the least whether he calls himself a Hindu, or a Buddhist, a Christian, or a Muhammadan..." [3] (J. Krishnamurti, At the Feet of the Master, p. 8)

"What is the object of religions? They are given to the world by men wiser than the masses of the people on whom they are bestowed, and are intended to quicken human evolvution . . . all types need religion, so that each may reach upward to a lif e higher than that which he is leading ... Religions seek to evolve the moral and intellectual nature to unfold itself." [4] (Annie Besant, Esoteric Christianity, pp. 2-3)