us4-he2-gal2
12-28-2009, 08:19 PM
Hey Abrahadabra:
I've copied a post below that I originally put together for enenuru. As some of you may know, my focus on that board is to investigate Mesopotamian Magic as it is known from the modern analysis of cuneiform text literature - I have remained fairly unread in general occult matters as a result of this interest although not entirely unread. I've recently determined to reexamine certain modern occult paths both to learn, and to test my underlying premise: that archaeological data, as little considered as it is, will offer a more substantual and direct route to old and venerable tradition than any modern path that has been peppered with this or that indirect line of transmission. While my objects may differ with many occultists here therefore, I believe I am reviewing material in an objective and academic enough fashion as to offer valid input for consideration. In the post below I am summerizing perspective on Blavatsky and Theosophy which was published in an academic journal:
The West Turns Eastward:
Madame Blavatsky and the Transformation of the Occult Tradition
This article (title above) is published in an academic journal by Mark Bevir (1994). The author begins by positioning Blavatsky within the greater framework of Oriental leaning in the west; he assigns an earlier precedent to certain Romantic authors in Europe. Romanticism was a certain intellectual and artistic philosophy which ran (or continues to run) counter intuitively to the flow of these modern times - it was popular among those intellectuals disillusioned with enlightenment thinking and industrialization (which even in early stages did not reverse, but systematized, human atrocity); the author informs us that certain Romantics (Emerson, Whitman, Forster) turned to the (east) Indian example as a people "who shunned material luxeries..[and who turned] to a simple life centered on self-realization and religious understanding" in line with Romantic principals. The Romantics however did not reach far into doctrines such as reincarnation or the law of Karma.
Bevir explains that Blavatsky on the other hand, in her perusal of Indian religious doctrine, enthusiastically applied its doctrines to Western religious dilemmas: she asserted that Indian evolutionary cosmology "met the challenge of Darwinism" and "the law of karma ..met the moral qualms many of he contemporaries felt about vicarious atonement." As an occultist, she also went farther than the Romantics by asserting that Indian concepts of magic could have practical value to the west.
Blavatsky and Spiritualism:
The occult world of the mid-1800s which Blavatsky lived through was one heavily influenced by a new movement known as Spiritualism. While ideas about the lost Egyptian magic and Hermetic philosophy and approachable spiritual realms were circulating in this or that format since the Renaissance, a new form of these loosely defined beliefs and ideas arouse in 1848 when occultist Andrew Davis (an American) entered a series of trances in which he believed he found the nature of the universe - an odd picture of a universe as a single spiritual whole with Martians far in advance of us (in their ability to communicate with spirits). New converts to Spiritualism all across America believed they could hear "raps" (as in knocks) which were sent from the spirit world in response to questions.
Henry Olcott was a writer for the Sunday Chronicle who set off to a farmstead in Chittendon, Vermont, to investigate a case of the "raps" (a spiritual event). When Blavatsky read the article she was intrigued, set off for Chittendon herself, and on the occultists arrival at the farmstead it was said that "the spirits became more spectacular than ever before" - thereafter Blavatsky became a prominent spiritualist.
While this brought some measure of notoriety, spiritualism didn`t last and Blavatsky was quick to downplay her former endorsement when spiritualism was discredited as fundimentally fraudulent.
Blavatsky`s occultism:
Bevir writes that the occultists own blend of occultism began to surface after 1875 - in essential, Blavatsky subordinated spiritualism, and reinterpreted it within an magical context; she claimed that magic is "but a science, a profound knowledge of the Occult forces in Nature, and of the laws governing the visible and invisible world." This Bevir says, is more like the traditional occult belief in an ancient wisdom incorporating both a mystical religion and natural magic. Realizing the chance that Occultism had with a weakening Christianity and a not yet entirely risen modern science, Blavatsky described her work as "a plea for the recognition of the hermetic philosophy" -
together with Olcott (from the Sunday Chronicle) she formed the Theosophical society.
Blavatsky's contribution to the occult world/
Blavatsky's change, the author explains, or her impact, was to take existing occultist ideas and to fit them into her times. These were the times when Christianity was rocked by the discoveries of evolution and by geological data which put the earth's creation at a much older point than Bishop Ussher's estimate of 4004 BC.
Blatvatsky took old occult concepts, such as, for example, the idea that "the universe began with a single all-embracing deity who was mind and who infused each particle of matter with a spark of the divine" (which is more less the dogma of the Hermetic neo-platonists), and she infused these concepts with modern day thinking: Mind (or "the deity") actually had the universe *evolve* (as in the theory of evolution), slowly, through a series of "emanations" with high and lower orders (like species). Blavatsky's own "occult cosmology" then reinterpreted old idea's and put a "new age" spin on them, it was an effort to wedge old concepts into a gap science was creating in the minds of some believes at the time, relying on what might be consider pseudo-scientific garb. We may wonder what was lost in this process?
Changes in concepts of Magic/
Occultists had long believed in the existence of another plain, an astral or spiritual plain which magicians can draw on to effect things in the physical world. Sometimes the Hermetic "as above so below" is employed to convey how influences on one sphere will transfer to the other - this all seems more or less like a sophisticated retrospective explanation for the principles of sympathetic magic, the practice of which long predated such elaborate belief systems.
Blavatsky, Bevir states, as she did in the case of occult cosmology, attempted to recast magic in modern day garb, giving it a pseudo-scientific terminology perhaps calculated to appeal to the newly faithless. The author remarks: "she wanted to defend magic on natural and scientific grounds, not on supernatural or dogmatic grounds such as that of the Bible..Thus, she denied that occult science transgressed the laws of nature. As she explained: "Nothing can be more easily accounted for than the highest possibilities of magic. By the radiant light of the universal magnetic ocean, whose electric waves bind the cosmos together, and in their ceaseless motion penetrate and in their ceaseless motion penetrate every atom and molecule of the boundless creation...."
Culture and the occult/
Besides the scientific "new age" spin Blavatsky applied to more time honored occult ideas of cosmology and magic, Bevir remarks on a third significant influence she had on occultism - that being her introduction of Oriental (read: Indian) traditions. Occultists to this point had from the time of the Greeks credited Egypt as the font of ancient wisdom. Blavatsky had read some scholarship of the day written by enthusiastic scholars of Indian culture that suggested India as the alma mater, the essential, of early civilization, religion, arts and sciences. Blavatsky seemed little informed in regards Mesopotamian culture, as she remarks:
"when we find some of the oldest Ceylonic traditions in the Chaldean Kabala and the Jewish Bible, we must thing that either Chaldeans or Babylonians had been in Ceylon or India."
Her technique of fusing Indian culture (Buddhism, Hinduhism and ancient Brahmanism) with her own reworking of Victorian occultism (inspiring occultism in the new age), was fairly simple according to Bevir: if some modern dilemma needed a non-Christian moral solution, she would muddle an Indian doctrine and paste it in place; if someone accused her of misusing an Indian doctrine, she would counter that they were not able to see the esoteric truth behind it which her own interpretations reveal.
While Blavatsky's learning and understanding of Sanskrit materials was occasionally impressive and sometimes had the agreement of Orientalists (the Indian literary scholars actually interpreting the texts), other times she differed from them markedly with her interpretations: Bevir describes that "her subjectivist approach becomes so marked that she seems almost to declare that Indian religions and so Indian society must be as she wishes irrespective of any evidence to the contrary. Orientalists might or might not support her analysis: if they did, well and good; if the did not, they were wrong."
Concluding - the Rise of the New Age Movement/
Bevir now concludes the article with a look at Blavatsky's lasting impact on Orientalism (Indian culture - i.e yoga, meditation etc.) in the west, and tendencies in new age occultism. The Theosophical society is consider the "grand parent" to the new age movement, which the author now describes concisely:
"More importantly, many of Blavatsky's views remain fashionable throughout the New Age movement. The general problem which she confronted continues to provide rationale for many New Age groups. They too try to reconcile religious life with a modern world dominated by a scientific spirit. Thus they seek natural accounts of working of the divine and possible of magic, often appealing to indiosyncratic interpretations of things such as the new physics as evidence for their religious beliefs. Further, New Age groups continue to show a predilection for equating their beliefs with ancient wisdom associated with the religious traditions of cultures other than their own. Finally, New Age groups often adopt Blavatsky's method for bridging any obvious gaps between the pseudo-scientific religious beliefs that they espouse and the alternative religious traditions that that champion. They appeal to some sort of esoteric understanding of these alternative religious traditions to justify their loose interpretations based on a selective use of contemporary scholarship. Indeed, they sometimes seem to define their understanding of alternative religious traditions and cultures in terms of their own preferences without bothering to study these traditions and cultures in anything other than the most superficial manner."
I've copied a post below that I originally put together for enenuru. As some of you may know, my focus on that board is to investigate Mesopotamian Magic as it is known from the modern analysis of cuneiform text literature - I have remained fairly unread in general occult matters as a result of this interest although not entirely unread. I've recently determined to reexamine certain modern occult paths both to learn, and to test my underlying premise: that archaeological data, as little considered as it is, will offer a more substantual and direct route to old and venerable tradition than any modern path that has been peppered with this or that indirect line of transmission. While my objects may differ with many occultists here therefore, I believe I am reviewing material in an objective and academic enough fashion as to offer valid input for consideration. In the post below I am summerizing perspective on Blavatsky and Theosophy which was published in an academic journal:
The West Turns Eastward:
Madame Blavatsky and the Transformation of the Occult Tradition
This article (title above) is published in an academic journal by Mark Bevir (1994). The author begins by positioning Blavatsky within the greater framework of Oriental leaning in the west; he assigns an earlier precedent to certain Romantic authors in Europe. Romanticism was a certain intellectual and artistic philosophy which ran (or continues to run) counter intuitively to the flow of these modern times - it was popular among those intellectuals disillusioned with enlightenment thinking and industrialization (which even in early stages did not reverse, but systematized, human atrocity); the author informs us that certain Romantics (Emerson, Whitman, Forster) turned to the (east) Indian example as a people "who shunned material luxeries..[and who turned] to a simple life centered on self-realization and religious understanding" in line with Romantic principals. The Romantics however did not reach far into doctrines such as reincarnation or the law of Karma.
Bevir explains that Blavatsky on the other hand, in her perusal of Indian religious doctrine, enthusiastically applied its doctrines to Western religious dilemmas: she asserted that Indian evolutionary cosmology "met the challenge of Darwinism" and "the law of karma ..met the moral qualms many of he contemporaries felt about vicarious atonement." As an occultist, she also went farther than the Romantics by asserting that Indian concepts of magic could have practical value to the west.
Blavatsky and Spiritualism:
The occult world of the mid-1800s which Blavatsky lived through was one heavily influenced by a new movement known as Spiritualism. While ideas about the lost Egyptian magic and Hermetic philosophy and approachable spiritual realms were circulating in this or that format since the Renaissance, a new form of these loosely defined beliefs and ideas arouse in 1848 when occultist Andrew Davis (an American) entered a series of trances in which he believed he found the nature of the universe - an odd picture of a universe as a single spiritual whole with Martians far in advance of us (in their ability to communicate with spirits). New converts to Spiritualism all across America believed they could hear "raps" (as in knocks) which were sent from the spirit world in response to questions.
Henry Olcott was a writer for the Sunday Chronicle who set off to a farmstead in Chittendon, Vermont, to investigate a case of the "raps" (a spiritual event). When Blavatsky read the article she was intrigued, set off for Chittendon herself, and on the occultists arrival at the farmstead it was said that "the spirits became more spectacular than ever before" - thereafter Blavatsky became a prominent spiritualist.
While this brought some measure of notoriety, spiritualism didn`t last and Blavatsky was quick to downplay her former endorsement when spiritualism was discredited as fundimentally fraudulent.
Blavatsky`s occultism:
Bevir writes that the occultists own blend of occultism began to surface after 1875 - in essential, Blavatsky subordinated spiritualism, and reinterpreted it within an magical context; she claimed that magic is "but a science, a profound knowledge of the Occult forces in Nature, and of the laws governing the visible and invisible world." This Bevir says, is more like the traditional occult belief in an ancient wisdom incorporating both a mystical religion and natural magic. Realizing the chance that Occultism had with a weakening Christianity and a not yet entirely risen modern science, Blavatsky described her work as "a plea for the recognition of the hermetic philosophy" -
together with Olcott (from the Sunday Chronicle) she formed the Theosophical society.
Blavatsky's contribution to the occult world/
Blavatsky's change, the author explains, or her impact, was to take existing occultist ideas and to fit them into her times. These were the times when Christianity was rocked by the discoveries of evolution and by geological data which put the earth's creation at a much older point than Bishop Ussher's estimate of 4004 BC.
Blatvatsky took old occult concepts, such as, for example, the idea that "the universe began with a single all-embracing deity who was mind and who infused each particle of matter with a spark of the divine" (which is more less the dogma of the Hermetic neo-platonists), and she infused these concepts with modern day thinking: Mind (or "the deity") actually had the universe *evolve* (as in the theory of evolution), slowly, through a series of "emanations" with high and lower orders (like species). Blavatsky's own "occult cosmology" then reinterpreted old idea's and put a "new age" spin on them, it was an effort to wedge old concepts into a gap science was creating in the minds of some believes at the time, relying on what might be consider pseudo-scientific garb. We may wonder what was lost in this process?
Changes in concepts of Magic/
Occultists had long believed in the existence of another plain, an astral or spiritual plain which magicians can draw on to effect things in the physical world. Sometimes the Hermetic "as above so below" is employed to convey how influences on one sphere will transfer to the other - this all seems more or less like a sophisticated retrospective explanation for the principles of sympathetic magic, the practice of which long predated such elaborate belief systems.
Blavatsky, Bevir states, as she did in the case of occult cosmology, attempted to recast magic in modern day garb, giving it a pseudo-scientific terminology perhaps calculated to appeal to the newly faithless. The author remarks: "she wanted to defend magic on natural and scientific grounds, not on supernatural or dogmatic grounds such as that of the Bible..Thus, she denied that occult science transgressed the laws of nature. As she explained: "Nothing can be more easily accounted for than the highest possibilities of magic. By the radiant light of the universal magnetic ocean, whose electric waves bind the cosmos together, and in their ceaseless motion penetrate and in their ceaseless motion penetrate every atom and molecule of the boundless creation...."
Culture and the occult/
Besides the scientific "new age" spin Blavatsky applied to more time honored occult ideas of cosmology and magic, Bevir remarks on a third significant influence she had on occultism - that being her introduction of Oriental (read: Indian) traditions. Occultists to this point had from the time of the Greeks credited Egypt as the font of ancient wisdom. Blavatsky had read some scholarship of the day written by enthusiastic scholars of Indian culture that suggested India as the alma mater, the essential, of early civilization, religion, arts and sciences. Blavatsky seemed little informed in regards Mesopotamian culture, as she remarks:
"when we find some of the oldest Ceylonic traditions in the Chaldean Kabala and the Jewish Bible, we must thing that either Chaldeans or Babylonians had been in Ceylon or India."
Her technique of fusing Indian culture (Buddhism, Hinduhism and ancient Brahmanism) with her own reworking of Victorian occultism (inspiring occultism in the new age), was fairly simple according to Bevir: if some modern dilemma needed a non-Christian moral solution, she would muddle an Indian doctrine and paste it in place; if someone accused her of misusing an Indian doctrine, she would counter that they were not able to see the esoteric truth behind it which her own interpretations reveal.
While Blavatsky's learning and understanding of Sanskrit materials was occasionally impressive and sometimes had the agreement of Orientalists (the Indian literary scholars actually interpreting the texts), other times she differed from them markedly with her interpretations: Bevir describes that "her subjectivist approach becomes so marked that she seems almost to declare that Indian religions and so Indian society must be as she wishes irrespective of any evidence to the contrary. Orientalists might or might not support her analysis: if they did, well and good; if the did not, they were wrong."
Concluding - the Rise of the New Age Movement/
Bevir now concludes the article with a look at Blavatsky's lasting impact on Orientalism (Indian culture - i.e yoga, meditation etc.) in the west, and tendencies in new age occultism. The Theosophical society is consider the "grand parent" to the new age movement, which the author now describes concisely:
"More importantly, many of Blavatsky's views remain fashionable throughout the New Age movement. The general problem which she confronted continues to provide rationale for many New Age groups. They too try to reconcile religious life with a modern world dominated by a scientific spirit. Thus they seek natural accounts of working of the divine and possible of magic, often appealing to indiosyncratic interpretations of things such as the new physics as evidence for their religious beliefs. Further, New Age groups continue to show a predilection for equating their beliefs with ancient wisdom associated with the religious traditions of cultures other than their own. Finally, New Age groups often adopt Blavatsky's method for bridging any obvious gaps between the pseudo-scientific religious beliefs that they espouse and the alternative religious traditions that that champion. They appeal to some sort of esoteric understanding of these alternative religious traditions to justify their loose interpretations based on a selective use of contemporary scholarship. Indeed, they sometimes seem to define their understanding of alternative religious traditions and cultures in terms of their own preferences without bothering to study these traditions and cultures in anything other than the most superficial manner."