Theosophy

This study provides a balanced account of the events that led to the separation of the American Section (headed by William Q. Judge) of the Theosophical Society in 1895 from their international Headquarters in Adyar, India (with Henry S. Olcott as President). William Q. Judge was the General Secretary of the American Section and one of the Society's original founders (along with Henry S. Olcott and Helena P. Blavatsky and others).  After the death of Helena P. Blavatsky in 1891, Judge was accused of forging letters from the Masters associated with the Society by Olcott and Annie Besant (who had joined the Society in May 1889).
The Preface to book published September 2016.
This book is available on eBay, or you can email the publisher at [email protected].

Scopo di queste pagine è fissare alcune premesse generali per una rilettura storica globale della psicosintesi. Per farlo è necessario adottare uno sguardo multifocale, in grado di evocare il contesto immediato e remoto dell’opera di Assagioli. La premessa è che la psicosintesi è spesso oggetto di malintesi e non detti, ascrivibili in buona parte al métissage operato dal pensiero di Assagioli, un pensiero sorretto da molte fonti e irradiante in varie direzioni. Assagioli era, come noto, un poliglotta e un attraversatore di mondi; alcuni di questi territori sono ancora poco mappati, storicamente compresi, e su di essi gravano preconcetti che non consentono di cogliere né l’originalità della psicosintesi, né tutta la portata della sua “funzione storica”. Qui vorrei provare a sondare alcune dimensioni di questa complessità. Per farlo seguirò il filo rosso delle psicotecniche di Assagioli, le cui origini sono (curiosamente) in parte poco note.

Scriabin's fascination with Theosophy was common amongst artists during Russia's Silver Age. This paper examines how interest in Theosophy emerged at this time in reaction to disillusionment with established religious norms, as well as to growing social and political tensions. In this context the research presented examines why the theosophical notion of cyclical evolution may have appealed to Scriabin, and attempts to establish a connection between theosophical dogma and Scriabin's highly personal eschatology, as expressed in the text to his unfinished 'Prefatory Act'. Scriabin's music is examined in a similar context, with particular consideration given to how the shape of the circle may be understood as inherent in certain musical structures and patterns, with examples drawn from Scriabin's Sonata No. 6, Op. 62, and Guirlandes, Op. 73, No. 1.

David W. Wood. Book Review of Rudolf Steiner, The Fourth Dimension. Sacred Geometry, Alchemy, and Mathematics (trans. Catherine E. Creeger, Anthroposophic Press, 2001).
Review originally published in the Newsletter of the Science Group of the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain, September 2002, pp. 2-3: https://sciencegroup.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/sgnl902.pdf

According to the Bible, Eve was the first to heed Satan’s advice to eat of the forbidden fruit. The notion of woman as the Devil’s accomplice is prominent throughout the history of Christianity. During the nineteenth century, rebellious females performed counter-readings of this misogynist tradition. Hereby, Lucifer was reconceptualised as a feminist liberator of womankind, and Eve became a heroine. In these reimaginings, Satan is an ally in the struggle against a patriarchy supported by God the Father and his male priests.

This study delineates how such Satanic feminism is expressed in a number of nineteenth-century esoteric works, literary texts, autobiographies, pamphlets and journals, newspaper articles, paintings, sculptures and even artefacts of consumer culture such as jewellery.

In the material, four motifs in particular are prominent: 1) interpretations of Eve’s role in the fall of man as something positive, 2) the witch as a proto-feminist figure, 3) the demon lover as an emancipator, 4) a feminised Satan contrasted with an oppressive male God. A fifth and less central motif is conceptions of Lilith, according to Jewish lore the unruly first wife of Adam, as the first feminist.

The analysis focuses on interfaces between esotericism and the political realm, as well as the interdependence of literature and the occult. New light is thus shed on neglected aspects of the intellectual history of feminism, Satanism and revisionary mythmaking. The study is informed by theories concerning counter-readings, counter-discourses and counter-myths, and in particular highlights the complex interplay of such phenomena and the hegemonic discourses that demonised feminism. A key theme in this context is the limits and paradoxes of inversion as a subversive strategy.

http://www.molinsorgenfrei.se/

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=884921544867963&id=294090267284430

The best expose on MK gandhi .& a deep look into global politics. Vegetarianism , radical green environmentalism = agenda of the globalists to make the people weak & take over the world /natural resources. Gandhi was an occultist theosophist freemason. His London diary is missing but 20 pages. he described his initiation into 3 rd degree freemasonry but in coded language. he supposedly wrote so much. but he forgets to mention the role of freemasonry , rothschilds , the role of secret socities. he propagated/ promoted feminine ideologies. passive resistence , nonviolence. but he never practised them. When his masters wanted he was more than willing to kill the innocents. he was a hardcore racist and never hid it. he allied himself openly with all the top racist fascist brital dictators and he praised them openly. salt is the child of sun and sea or fire and water and in occult esoteric lore its feminine. that must be the reason why he had salt satyagraha. he was a complete british agent , a trained mason. who talked through both sides of his mouth and the ignorant people believed him blindly. as always .

The Tamil Śaiva yogi Sri Sabhapati Swami (b. 1828) has had a substantial impact on nineteenth- and twentieth-century South Asian and Western occult movements, yet with a few exceptions he has been overlooked by authors writing on modern yoga. His writings survive in multiple languages, including English as well as highly Sanskritised dialects of Tamil, Hindustani, and Bengali, and also include elaborate visual diagrams. This chapter first summarises Sabhapati’s relevance to the field of Yoga Studies. It then offers an overview of Sabhapati’s life based on North American and European archival sources as well as new textual and ethnographic sources from the author’s field work in Tamil Nadu. Finally, the chapter analyses the cross-fertilisation of Sabhapati’s teachings in the Theosophical Society and Aleister Crowley’s (1875–1947) Thelema.

A discussion of how G.R.S. Mead shaped 20th-century Anglophone discourse about Gnosticism decades prior to the Nag Hammadi discovery, through his interpretation of the Askew and Bruce Codices, and his popularization of the work of Berlin Coptologist Carl Schmidt. Thanks in part to Mead, the reception-history of the Askew and Bruce Codices goes straight through histories of esotericism, occultism, and magic in the twentieth century.

A última obra de Almada, intitulada Começar, é um testamento espiritual do artista, compendiando todo o seu saber filosófico e sinestético. Poeta, pintor, coreógrafo, ensaísta, Almada converge neste manifesto em pedra os conhecimentos matemáticos e filosóficos procurados ao longo da sua vida. Seguindo as metamorfoses da iconografia da estrela a cinco pontas o leitor pode ler, como numa síntese admirável, a inteira obra do artista poliédrico.

This special issue of the Journal of Hindu Studies explores Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava engagement with key facets of colonial modernity and its role in shaping modern Hindu discourse. The issue's publication, it is hoped, will serve to both nurture the growing sub-field of Modern Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Studies and, more broadly, encourage greater attention to the important contributions of other such sampradāyic Hindu currents to the texture and dynamics of modern Hinduism.

The present paper intends to focus on the laic dimension of the trinitarian principle, analys-ing – in particular – some passages of Antonio Rosmini’s Theosophy. The main thesis is that in the Italian thinker there is a laic way to introduce Trinity into philosophical dis-course, where “laic” does not mean a rationalistic reduction of the Trinitarian mystery, but – as the etymological meaning suggests – its popular use, which does not make Trinity “embarrassing” for philosophical argumentation. On the contrary, far from being exclusive pre-rogative of theologians, the Trinitarian one is a laic principle that describes the grammar of being and that, therefore, has to be used in ontology as an authentic perspective of thinking, and also as form of thinking itself.

E. Pili, La Trinità è laica. Rosmini e il rapporto tra filosofia e rivelazione, «Quaderni di InSchibbolleth», 12 (2/2019), pp. 173-186

Translated from Mullā Ṣ adrā, Majmūʽa-yi rasā 'il-i falsafī-i Ṣ adr al-muta'allihīn, ed. Hamed Naji Isfahani (Tehran: Hikmat, 1375 Sh), 265-6.] On the thirtieth night of the month of God, the month of fasting, in the year 1028 of the hijra of the Master of mankind-May blessings and peace be upon him and his family!-after I had lethargically performed some of the recommended prayers, I dreamed that I was going up to a high place through a narrow route between two rectangular mountains or hills [stretched] along the way to the north and south, sometimes riding and sometimes walking.

Obsah SVÃT JAKUBA B÷HMA / 9 éivot / 13; SvÏt / 22; ÑRannÌ Ëerv·nkyì / 48; ProlomenÈ mlËenÌ / 55; MagickÈ slovo / 78; Odkaz / 82; ÑCesta ke Kristuì / 88; P¯eklad / 92 CESTA KE KRISTU / 95 O pravÈmp pok·nÌ [De poenitentia vera] / 97 O pravÈm pok·nÌ II [De poenitentia] / 125 O svatÈ modlitbÏ [Liber precationum] / 130 O pravÈ odevzdanosti [De aequanimitate] / 163 O pravÈm znovuzrozenÌ [De regeneratione] / 181 O nadsmyslovÈm ûivotÏ [De vita mentali] / 207 P¯evz·cn· br·na boûskÈho nazÌr·nÌ [Theoscopia] / 225 Rozhovor osvÌcenÈ duöe s neosvÌcenou [Colloquium viatorum] / 250 O Ëtveru komplexÌ [De quattuor complexionibus] / 264 KlÌË [Clavis] / 288 Pozn·mky / 315 P¯ehled dÏl Jakuba Bˆhma / 331 Vybran· literatura / 333 SlovnÌËek pojm˘a rejst¯Ìk / 342 SvÏt Jakuba Bˆhma ÑVËela sbÌr· med z mnoha kvÏtin, a t¯eba je jedna kvÏtina lepöÌ neû druh·, co na tom tÈ vËele z·leûÌ? Bere si, co jÌ slouûÌ. MÏla by snad do tÈ kvÏtiny vrazit ûihadlo jenom proto, ûe jÌ nechutn· jejÌ öt·va, jak to dÏl·v· pohrdliv˝ ËlovÏk? Takov˝ se pere jen o pouhÈ slupky, a drahocennou öt·vu, kter· slouûÌ ûivotu, tu nech·v· st·t. ñ Co je mi po vÏdÏnÌ, kdyû v nÏm neûiju? Ö Neh·dat se jen o vÏdÏnÌ, n˝brû st·t se nov˝m ËlovÏkem, kter˝ ve spravedlnosti a svatosti ûije v Bohu.ì 1

È l’alba del nuovo secolo. Nella semioscurità di un salotto della Roma nobiliare, tante mani si stringono attorno a un tavolo: a capo di questo, il medium convoglia le energie per mettere in contatto le anime del “di là” con i partecipanti di questo rito laico e mondano. Tra questi, ospite d’eccezione, c’è un ancora poco noto Luigi Pirandello, colui che di lì a pochi anni avrebbe molto fatto parlare di sé con "Il fu Mattia Pascal", poi divenuto un classico della letteratura italiana del Novecento. È proprio nel romanzo del 1904 che l’agrigentino eleva e nobilita artisticamente tutte quelle suggestioni di natura spiritica e teosofica che aveva coltivato già a partire dalla fine dell’Ottocento su esortazione del sodale Luigi Capuana, fermamente convinto dei «fatti» della medianità e del paranormale.
Sullo sfondo dell’ambiguo clima culturale a cavallo tra Otto e Novecento, segnato dalla crisi del positivismo materialista e dal conseguente emergere di dottrine di stampo esoterico e pseudo-religioso volte a coniugare fede e scienza, l’Autore approfondisce ed indaga esaustivamente il rapporto tra Pirandello e l’occulto nella Roma di quegli anni, in cui pullulavano spiritisti e teosofi, occultisti e massoni. Combinando storia e letteratura, il volume fornisce un’immagine originale e alternativa dello scrittore agrigentino nel pieno della sua prima formazione intellettuale, inscindibile da quelle tensioni irrazionalistiche che ne avrebbero caratterizzato l’opera e il pensiero negli anni a venire.

This article looks at how the changing relationship between science and religion from the fin de siècle to the present period continues to influence healing practices in Mongolia. It explores how science and religion, rather than being congenitally antithetical to one another, are frequently co-constitutive. By following a few key historical lineages of spiritualism in their dialogue with the Mongolian cultural region, the article illustrates how ongoing exchanges between science and religion have contributed to changes in contemporary Mongolian urban religious practices. As the article illustrates, science, and/or the idea of science, has resulted in changes to lay religious epistemologies and methodologies. At the same time the prestige of science can be utilised as a means of underlining the strength of ritual efficacy, particularly within Buddhism. Yet when science or allopathic medicine fails to explain or to heal, science is utilised as a yardstick against which the transcendent power of ritual becomes evident.

Resumen: “Mi secreto entre las ramas.  El hombre contra el ángel en la mujer” estudia la obra cumbre de Claudia Lars: Sobre el ángel y el hombre (1962).  El breve ensayo analiza una escritura auto-referencial que observa su propio quehacer por las metáforas clásicas de la flor (anthos), el canto, la forma y la blancura de la página.  Al centro de ese recuadro aparece la poeta, inspirada por su propio goce íntimo que denomina “ángel”.  Al proseguir el llamado secreto de ese principio interno de orden masculino —un animus junguiano— Lars adopta una vocación artística que la obliga a inquirir su ser-solitaria-en-el-mundo.  De aceptar una relación de pareja, truncaría la dádiva poética.  La escritora enfrenta el dilema de “dividirme” durante “mi humilde día de servicio”.  Le sirve a un hombre —entregándole su recinto interior— o bien prosigue sola el dictado de su ángel por escribir poesía.  Al resolver la disyuntiva, en una opción de soledad —introspectiva y creadora— el largo poema sugiere borrar el hombre del título, para instalar a la mujer en su labor poética.  El presente ensayo revierte el tachón convencional de lo femenino al glosar el título Sobre el ángel y el hombre como Sobre el ángel y la mujer.  Por la inmortalidad del alma, la vocación poética larsiana desciende “del olvido” celeste, se arraiga en “el ardiente mensaje” de la “lengua”, hasta refugiar la poesía en “la quietud” recordatoria “del limo”. 

Abstract: “My Secret among the Branches.  Man against the Angel in Woman” studies a key work by Claudia Lars: On the Angel and Man (1962).  This brief essay analyses her self-referential writing, which observes its own cause through classical metaphors of flower (anthos), song, and form as well as whiteness of the page as purity.  In the middle of that framework, the female poet appears; she is inspired by her own bliss that she calls an “angel”, a Jungian animus.  Following the secret demand of that inner principle —male in gender— Lars adopts an artistic vocation, which forces her to inquire into being-alone-in-the-world.  If she accepts a male companion, she would disfigure her poetic gift.  The female writer confronts the dilemma of “dividing myself” during “my humble day of service”.  She could serve a man —delivering her inner ground to him— or she could obey the angel’s request to write poetry instead.  Solving the alternative by an option of introspective and creative solitude, the long poem suggests erasing man from the title to portray woman in her poetic endeavors.  The essay reverts the convential erasure of female by rewriting the title On Angel and Man as On Angel and Woman.  Thanks to an inmortal soul, Lars’ poetic vocation descends from celestial “oblivion”, takes refuge in “burning messages” of her “tongue/language”, and finally shelters her poetry in “memorial stillness” of “silt”.

According to Tsong Khapa, Amitabha means "boundless Age" of the universal soul as well as "immeasurable light" and "all encompassing radiating light" or "sun and lotus disc" bright as a "million beams of pure light" which I translate as the Dharmakaya monadic vesture or seventh principle.

Tsong Khapa teaches only enlightenment and intelligent and wise traverse across the ocean or "deep pit" of Samsara will lead to this vesture and the mind or light of the wisdom of Sophia, "brighter than ten thousand suns" and therefore born of the seven sons of light. At The seventh initiation, the initiate becomes a concentrated point of living light and a Buddha.

Чарльз Кинг (Charles King), автор бестселлера последней четверти девятнадцатого века - «Гностики и их наследие» ("The Gnostics and their Remains"), увязывает гностическую, доктрину с эзотерическими учениями и символизмом более древних и «смежных» религий. Е.П. Блаватская в многочисленных и чрезвычайно благожелательных упоминаниях о гностиках в своих работах неоднократно цитировала этого выдающегося ученого и теософа, одного из немногих энтузиастов своего времени, пытавшихся словно повернуть вспять времена как «прогрессирующего позитивизма и вульгарного материализма», так и периодически возвращавшиеся и сменявшие их времена оголтелой церковной ортодоксии.

Благодарю Анну Блейз за помощь в работе.

This conference presentation explores the introduction of yoga to Russia through the travelogues of the co-founder of the Theosophical Society, Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891). The paper compares Blavatsky's views on yoga as a postural and spiritual practice with those of Swami Vivekananda and others in the context of emerging interest in yoga in the West.

The twentieth century saw an unprecedented spike in the study of altered states of consciousness. New ASCs, such as those associated with LSD and psilocybin mushrooms, were cultivated and studied, while older ASCs were given new classifications: out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, psychokinesis, extrasensory perception.  Altered Consciousness in the Twentieth Century analyses these different approaches and methodologies, and includes exciting new research into neglected areas.

This volume investigates the representation of ASCs in the culture of the twentieth century and examines the theoretical models that attempt to explain them. The international contributors critically examine a variety of ASCs, including precognition, near-death experiences, telepathy, New Age ‘channelling’, contact with aliens and UFOs, the use of alcohol and entheogens, analysing both the impact of ASCs on the culture and how cultural and technological changes influenced ASCs. The contributors are drawn from the fields of English and American literature, religious studies, Western esotericism, film studies, sociology and history of art, and bring to bear on ASCs their own disciplinary and conceptual perspectives, as well as a broader interdisciplinary knowledge of the subject. The collection represents a vital contribution to the growing body of work on both ASCs and the wider academic engagement with millennialism, entheogens, occulture and the paranormal.

This article explores the socio-linguistic innovations of eighteenth-century German Pietists, a register that they themselves referred to as the "Language of Canaan." This unique sociolect (group language) was but one of many esoteric models of knowledge taken up by Pietists, who styled themselves as "true" Christians and thus adepts who – in contrast to "worldly" contemporaries – could understand the deeper (esoteric) significance of Scriptures and indeed, the semiology of the world itself. The article outlines the cultural and social functions that language fulfilled for the group before tracing Pietists' esoteric views on language back to the literature of Johann Arndt, a Lutheran pastor who was a follower of Paracelsus. Finally, the article presents one case study of Pietists' use of the Language of Canaan to argue for radical social and theological positions.

Grant Morrison is one of the world’s most acclaimed comic writers, known for both metafictional stylistic experiments and his very public penchant for a comparably postmodernist form of occult bricolage commonly called chaos magic. Morrison’s practical and theoretical interests in gnosticism, tantra, etc. inform his output in overt ways and exemplify an influential contemporary approach to yogic traditions in commercial comics. This chapter explores the treatment of Tibetan Dzogchen practice in Morrison’s late 2000s work on Batman, where he applies esoteric Buddhist meditation techniques to the perennial superhero theme of secret, split identities. As Marc Singer (2012) has observed, Morrison tackled similar motifs a decade earlier in The Invisibles, but where that opus generally celebrated the disruptive potential of the titular anarchist collective’s fragmented selves, here Batman’s fractured psyche forms the story’s central conflict. Transformational ego-transcendence through a solitary ‘dark retreat’ ritual akin to sensory deprivation becomes his means for survival, but even as the details of the rites draw on Buddhist traditions, the way Morrison depicts the experience and deploys the theme of isolation throughout can be read as emblematic of an individualized initiatory ordeal rooted more in the ceremonial magic of Aleister Crowley than in Tibetan Vajrayana.

Der folgende Artikel ist eine Fortsetzung von David W. Woods Forschungsarbeit zu historischen Persönlichkeiten, die den Charakteren in Rudolf Steiners Mysteriendramen zugrunde liegen. Diesmal wird der Autor versuchen, den realen Menschen hinter der Seherin Theodora aufzudecken, die wiederum eine Metamorphose der Figur des Habichts in Goethes Märchen ist.
https://diedrei.org/lesen/theodoras-prophetische-offenbarung

CHRISTOSOPHIA čili CESTA KE KRISTU a jiné texty 329 DOSLOV: CESTA JAKUBA BÖHMA 328 CESTA KE KRISTU putoval světem další tři léta jako tovaryš. O jeho tehdejším životě nevíme takřka nic -nepočítáme-li v to ovšem snad až příliš barvitá líčení Böhmových osudů u Franckenberga. Píše:

Rudolf Steiner published the fairy tale “Der Ring” (The Ring) in August 1884, when he was twenty-three years old. Forgotten for almost 130 years, the tale was never reprinted or included in any subsequent German edition of Steiner’s writings, only becoming rediscovered in a Budapest library archive in 2011. It has now been translated and made publicly available for the first time since 1884.

There is no doubt that Rudolf Steiner’s 1884 fairy tale “The Ring” is a highly enigmatic piece of writing, and could even be called an esoteric tale, as it seems to depict in a veiled artistic, but still open manner, Steiner's early inner enlightenment experiences.
 
Steiner's text is followed by an Afterword: "Rudolf Steiner's Early Enigmatic Tale", by David W. Wood.

Publication in the Southern Cross Review, vol. 113, July-August 2017: https://southerncrossreview.org/113/steiner-the-ring.htm