C. W. Leadbeater

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) was an English clergyman who became a prominent and controversial member of the Theosophical Society. Ordained in the Church of England, he joined the society in 1883 and traveled with its founders to India. He wrote many popular books on clairvoyance, the astral plane, the human aura and occult chemistry, often in collaboration with Annie Besant, and claimed psychic knowledge of the inner worlds. He was involved in promoting the young Jiddu Krishnamurti as a coming world teacher and later became a bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church in Australia. Accusations about his conduct shadowed his career.