Lomaland

A school for the lost mysteries of antiquity, under amethyst domes

In February 1897 the Theosophist leader Katherine Tingley laid the first stone on Point Loma for a School for the Revival of the Lost Mysteries of Antiquity, and a White City rose on the point, set at the western edge of the continent and oriented toward India, the spiritual centre of her movement. Lomaland was a school, a colony and the American headquarters of the Theosophical Society: a Raja Yoga academy with more than 300 boarding pupils, the first Greek theatre in North America, a Temple of Peace and an Academy Building under amethyst domes lit at night and seen from the sea, orchards, a publishing house, and a college that became a Theosophical university in 1919. About 60 percent of the community were women, and so were 60 percent of its leaders. After Tingley died in 1929 the Depression wore it down, and in 1942 it was sold. The campus is now Point Loma Nazarene University, which keeps many of Lomaland’s architectural features, among them a restored amethyst dome, and the trees the Theosophists planted turned a barren neighbourhood into the Wooded Area.