Some Impressions of Lomaland (1908) by Kenneth Morris

Kenneth Morris arrived at the Theosophical Headquarters near San Diego in January 1908. He remained there twenty-two years, until January 1930 when he headed to Wales.  

The Theosophical Headquarters was situated on Point Loma, a peninsular headland running north and south, with San Diego Bay to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. (The southern part of Point Loma was—and still is—a military base.) In 1897, Katherine Tingley, Leader of The Theosophical Society, purchased a large number of acres on the western side of peninsula, and quickly began building some remarkable buildings like the Temple of Peace and the Homestead (later known as the Raja-Yoga Academy), both surmounted by glass domes which reflected the sunlight during the day and which were illuminated from within by night. The fruitful land, mostly barren at that time, was filled with palm and other trees, and myriads of flowers. The theosophical community became known as Lomaland. Its heyday ran until Tingley's death in 1929, and the fortunes of the Theosophical Society were greatly diminished that same year after the stock market crash. In 1942, the Theosophical Society sold off its remaining Lomaland properties and moved north to Covina, some twenty miles to the east of Los Angeles. closing the Lomaland chapter of its history. 

After Kenneth Morris arrived in January 1908, he he wrote an article "Some Impression of Lomaland," published in the June 1908 issue of the International Theosophical Chronicle, a London journal. Below are extracts of this article by Kenneth Morris.

It is hard to conceive, when one first sees Lomaland, what the photographers were about when they gave us pictures so far falling short of the jewel reality. The sun has made this land his own, and the whole promontory has drunk and drunk in sunshine until it seems to be quivering and alive and intense with music, gladness, hope, reality. Years are taken from one’s age when one sets foot here, and one cannot say whether soil or air or some other factor had most hand in working the magic. . . .

The whole headland is redolent with colour, a glory of scent, and Prospero’s island was not so magical with music. The sea will permit no silence, yet the sound is richer than silence itself—perhaps one might say, more full of the soul of silence than any mere absence of sound.. . . 

What the great hill was like before it was crowned with those beautiful domes one cannot say. Nature must have done her best for it even then, and left no stone unturned to make it lovely. Now it is as if she were thankful to a greater artist than herself for painting into her picture fairer things than even she could have dreamed. She is here still, and when there are thousands or millions of human people on the Point, she will not have gone: she will be still here, and constantly jubilant and grateful. It is not merely that the sky is bluer now in January than the June sky at its bluest in other lands; nor that the Pacific is a jewel—many jewels—sapphires, turquoise, topaz, amethysts (while the Mediterranean’s self is only pigment or blue porcelain); not that the ruddy gold of the soil is teeming and blooming with myriads of myriad-scented flowers and shrubs; nor that the sun is empurpling every shadow, and waking gold and diamonds wherever there is earth to be gilded or water to gleam. It is that all these things are true, and that further, and above all, one senses nature herself, alert, friendly, triumphant; not displeased with human effort, but backing it so lovingly that the sewn seed produces a thousandfold, and the white tents and domed temples are as if they had grown from magical roots, and had been conceived by no less an artist than the builder of the mountains and designer of the seas. One cannot imagine Point Loma without them. They must have been there, one dreams, for a million ages; and fairycraft was concealing them until a few years ago. The place is vibrant with the glory of which legends are made. . . .

A great rock-bound promontory, rising high out of the sea; first the rocks, then the cliffs, then the hillside rising and rising. It is a long way down from the homestead to the sea, and the hillside that divides them has one grand object in life, and that is to produce sweet-scented growths; so that one can hardly tell where gardens end and wild life begins, both being so perfect and closely in harmony. Over all is the crowning miracle of those two gleaming domes. Take the rim of the sea, between the blue and the white of the foam; of that green they made the dome on the home­stead; the other one is of the colour of pomegranate juice, and the sun will not let either of them be anything but shining. . .

Here are men and women of all lands, speaking all languages—efficients of every trade, art, craft or profession amongst them—sharing a common strenuous life; and the whole scheme is so perfectly laid out and controlled that no waste nor turmoil nor ill-feeling can creep in; there is no jar or confusion, no cliques nor any interfering with the duties of another. The more the world sees and hears of this place the nearer will it be to solving the problems that encumber it now. The conviction is forced on one that this is a model for the whole earth to fashion its life after.