INTRODUCTION
When I come across modern alternative spiritual teachers constructing new terminology, I am reminded that this has become customary in twentieth-century to present-day. The first generation of Theosophists were not constructing an extensive array of new terminology to baffle people.
They were using terminology from schools, traditions and languages directly and then interpretating them into English and so forth and developed glossaries to aid in your study. Sometimes, the original terminology in the other language was kept fully intact, and not interpreted, forcing you to learn them and research about them.
One of the aims of bringing students of religion and philosophy together in the “spirit of Theosophy” was to understand and disseminate knowledge about the old philosophical and esoteric works, while avoiding the creation of new errors.
ESOTERIC JARGON AND BAGGAGE
Now, everyone thinks they can do such a thing, and therefore, there is no need for Theosophy. Theosophy was a pioneer, we are told, but has its idea been really replicated? No. It hasn’t. Hence, we get in the 1990s, the Ecumenical efforts of Inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue and grand ceremony. Attempts at trying to control, manage and co-opt that mission of universal freemasonry Blavatsky wrote of in her Isis Unveiled.
The Pope could confer much good on the world, and is doing such, but now they find themselves up against orders like the Opus Dei and the various American Christian nationalists. People attach themselves to sides in a history of Religious Wars they do not fully understand. Today is a much different day than the battles of the 1800s and before in terms of religious influence. Things are much more muddied now, and new alliances have to be formed. New work must be created, and new efforts to involve ourselves in the world’s conflict of ideas and solutions. New good and unifying preachers and philosophers are needed to restore some balance and inspire a generation of students, that will lessen our errors.
Many new errors eventually developed, and over-intellectualism provide as much contribution to the errors of over-simplifications of Occult Philosophy (a retired word according to the scholars of Esotericism). What is the use of retiring simpler terminology with baggage, and developing more complicating ones?
PERPETUATING MISUNDERSTANDING ABOUT THEOSOPHY CREATED WIDE-RANGING CONSEQUENCES
Theosophy is often blamed for these developments in the history of modern Western religions and “spirituality.” This is a simplification of historical and ideological developments that affected and created many groups and competing movements prior to, during and eventually after the peak of the Theosophical Movement in the 1930s.
This leads into the New Age movement, and framing Blavatsky as the “Mother of the New Age,” to make it easier for Protestant and Catholic Journals to doubly-attack Theosophy and Gnosticism, for no real reason except that this is a consequence of ignorance. But you see, out of this history of religious war and competition for “Truth,” we are now all in the present-day struggling to disseminate Wisdom and challenge “modernity.”
So, we are able to research shifts in style of terminology1, spiritual ideologies and aesthetic, that brings upon modern alternative religions the same attitude Guénon had towards Theosophy as a Theosophism (as Pseudo-Theosophy to traditional Perennialism).
One of the positions I have shared is that the attacks of the Guénonians and Traditionalists helped nobody. They find themselves in the exact same position in our times to combat certain influences in “modernity” as the Theosophists. Theosophists were not strictly “Traditionalists” and Guénon did not want to be defined as a “Traditionalist” himself. The “Traditionalists” of our time would not confess to their own confusion, since many are blending with reactionary ethno-nationalist or racialist movements and ideology throughout Europe, the United States, Russia and so on.
RELIGIOUS SUPREMACISM OF IDEAS
During the period of Guénon’s critique against Theosophy, the Theosophists within the movement after Blavatsky’s death were immediately confronted with a fight against the rise of Neo-Theosophy (Blavatsky called it Pseudo-Theosophy) inside and outside the Theosophical Movement.
As stated, a number of times, Muslims who do know of Theosophy have adopted Guénon’s positions through his book, and no Theosophist has ever confronted or addressed Muslims directly who know nothing else except what Guénon says. Muslims also have a twisted view of history sometimes when comparing Islam to other traditions, to position itself in a place of supremacy of religious thought.
Theosophical Teachings are not ‘a product of the West,’ and they are not as some hold against the Rosicrucians and Freemasons, a distorted copy of Islamic metaphysical concepts.
Theosophists have demonstrated however, that Islam is not the origin and source of Theosophical positions, and those positions are easily proven to be older than Christianity and Islam three times over their own existence. A person, that studies these positions in Theosophy would have to relinquish some of their dogmatism and religious pride to understand the proper place of the Mysteries, of the Zoroastrians, the “Pagans,” of Mesopotamia, the Americas, Africa and of ancient India in the larger picture of the History of Religion. All deserve their due, and the Theosophical Movement declared that it was time.
Whereas, for a great deal of time, we have understood these histories through biases and misunderstandings for the purpose of establishing a particular religion and theology in a place of supreme worth. This challenges both the animus and claims to civilization by those who strictly want to portray a Chinese, Russian, Islamic or American view of history and dominance of ideas (or contribution to humanity).
THEOSOPHISTS, TRADITIONALISTS AND PERENNIALISTS ALL IN THE SAME BOAT
Guénon’s attack and Traditionalists helped to kill the original efforts of the Theosophical Movement’s mission; by thinking they could take their place. Now, the repute of Theosophy, of the ideals which Guénon represented all suffer a heavy blow in the modern world. Blavatsky was fighting against the same degradation and spiritual corruption. There are many examples in her critiques as was also shared by Mazzini in his Essays, e.g., Helena Blavatsky critique of the French Revolution of 1789: Material Progress and the Rich. Attacks against her replaces the desire of people trying to understand this history to actually read her thoughts, which are highly relevant to our times and conflicts.
When I go into a university library, you know what is on the shelves if you are looking in the sections for Blavatsky or research about Theosophy? Is it deliberate, a fault of academia or ignorance, that you’ll only find K. Paul Johnson’s book (full of theories and conjecture people have taken to be absolute facts; see Case of the Masters, their Disciples and Sponsors behind the Theosophical Movement) and Guénon’s critique in his book, History of a Pseudo-Religion.
- An example would be the history of going from using other languages and English translations of terms to overelaborate made-up terminology like generative quantum force-spirit entropic accelerationism. This is the pseudo-knowledge which we do not want to exhibit. Understanding this serves as a natural shield against subversion. It is true however, that Theosophists were blamed for using “jargon,” but this is not the same, since we are simply explaining the “jargon” used to veil a science of symbolism in antiquity, and of secret or hidden meanings of works, and not to create new ridiculous ones. This is what unfortunately happened to Theosophists, but Theosophists are not to solely blame. ↩︎
The American Minervan 
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