[Skull]

Modern Theosophy started with HP Blavatsky, WQ Judge and others. Here is a later follower of HPB writing on the subject of Adepts or Masters of Wisdom:

http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/...p.htm#contents

From the Introductory:

It is our Theosophical teaching that greater men even than those geniuses to whom I have last above alluded exist in the world at the present time and existed in past times; and they have lived and taught and guided their fellowmen; and these Great Ones compose a spiritual Brotherhood of the Great Sages and Seers of the human race. These are what are called the Theosophical Mahatmans. They are the Elder Brothers of mankind. They are men, not spirits. They are men who have evolved through self-devised efforts in individual evolution, always advancing forwards and upwards until they attained the lofty supremacy that now they hold. They were not so created by any extra-cosmic Deity, but they are men who have become what they are by means of inward spiritual striving, by spiritual and intellectual yearning, by aspiration to be greater and -- better, nobler and higher. They are not what they are by any favoritism either of a god or of Fate, but have merely run ahead of the great multitude of men. There they stand; they are Helpers, they are Seers, they are Sages. They have naught that they have by way of gift. All that they have -- which means all that they are -- all that they have evolved to, all that they have become, they have gained by self-devised efforts in individual evolutionary growth.