We are who we are, because we are “lovers of the ancients.” I would not be writing without my influences from Greek, Indian and Islamic Philosophy; and Blavatsky, Suhrawardi and Henry Corbin. I traced the styles of Blavatsky’s references, going to sources of doctrines in the Chaldean Oracles and the works of the eclectic orientalist Samuel Fales Dunlap (1825-1905). I wanted to trace the verity and origins of each particular idea in the religions and schools Blavatsky was pointing to. This led me to an understanding between Greek and Indian civilization. After that, I sought to understand the deal with Christianity. As some of you may not know, I have been in Catholic schools since the sixth grade (correction: seventh grade). I was introduced to Catholic humanitarian service and philosophy, which I specifically continued much later into college at DePaul University. DePaul claimed to represent a “Liberal Catholicism” and the mission of Vincentianism (St. Depaul Vincent). I am a representative of the Vincentian mission, as much as I am of Theosophy and service to all humanity. Similarly to Pope Leo XIV (born Robert Francis Prevost on September 14, 1955 in my hometown Chicago, Illinois), there are American and Latin roots. I did not embrace Catholicism as a convert, but I learned to understand it. When I would listen to lectures from Jesuits and bad-ass activist nuns informed by their mystical Christianity, I could immediately understand them, their devotion, life experiences and wisdom.
This translatability comes from a comparative and analogetic study of the history of religions, but it may work only one way, whereas the Christian is devoted to their god. The argument would be to not subordinate religious truth to the confines of Christian theology. My approach has led some colleagues to find solace in their own religious tradition, or a new one. The only goal is to not lead people into religious hatred and narrow-mindedness. In this sense, there is much hatred for Pope Leo XIV from American right evangelicals, especially after his interreligious address to those celebrating Diwali. At DePaul, in the Religious Studies Department for example, it acknowledges on a plaque the roots of the land the school is built on, and the legacy of the Native Americans. Today, in my country this is viewed by the political right as “Social Justice,” “DEI,” and “Woke.” The degeneration is astounding.
My approach has been, that I have sought to understand every major and ancient religion in their highest sense and learn their highest aspirations. What appeals to me is when a religion is functioning as it should, not as a means of corruption, dominionism and tyrannical despotism. I have no personal beliefs in shortcuts for humanity’s ignorance (such as a savior coming to wrap up the day) and believe causal effects and conflict between various forces will play out for a long time, if we do not go extinct first. Therefore, I take a radical position of discouraging obsessions with Apocalyptic and messianic prophecy. History is not dependent upon miracles, but on an extreme complex web of action. Perhaps, this approach will appeal to you, and you can adopt it, though you must take it seriously. When I speak to a person of another faith, I firstly do not behave as if I know more than them, though I do not hide my actual views. I drop them in, gradually and I have not found real conflict in that area, besides the actual result — an exchange of ideas and spiritual aspirations, and a new friend. This was not learned from Theosophy or Interfaith. I learned it from my readings of historical and martial conflicts between Japan and China, and how some philosophers sought to deal with cultural conflict. This led me to the different neuro-semantic orientations between cultures in the works of Korzybski.
I had at one point $3,000 worth of a library of rare and old books about Freemasonry (my grandfather was a Mason), Rosicrucianism, Hermeticism, Medieval Occultism, Gnosticism, Indian Philosophy, Chinese Philosophy, Kabbalah and so forth; and sadly, sold most of them to a Chicago bookshop up North, before I moved to Seattle years ago. I felt there was no need a physical attachment to them. When I returned to Chicago, I came back home to a very small library. I was hence glad, that a theosophist helped me a couple years ago by providing me a large library worth of sources and books in zip files and pdfs. It isn’t the same as having the physical books, but it will work.
William Emmette Coleman incorrectly accused H.P. Blavatsky of plagiarizing from Samuel Fales Dunlap, whose style is like James Morgan Pryse and Bhagavan Das. This style of writing is a dramatic composition of a large compilation of quotations arranged almost as if it was a classical play. I like this style. It is a blinding of facts from the hoary past and speaks to the inner spirit. H.P. Blavatsky systematized S.F. Dunlap’s work into a more coherent framework, according to Jake B. Winchester (Roots of the Oriental Gnosis: W. E. Coleman, H.P. Blavatsky, S.F. Dunlap, 2015, Masters thesis), Tim Rudbøg (H.P. Blavatsky’s Theosophy in Context: The Construction of Meaning in Modern Western Esotericism, 2012, Ph.D. thesis), and Wouter J. Hanegraaff (The Theosophical Imagination, Correspondences 5: 3-39, 2017). Samuel Fales Dunlap reveals a geography and history as no other in explaining the philosophy and roots of Jewish and Christian ideas with Nordic, Phillistine, Assyrian and Phoenician connections; and of the “fire-worshippers” of Hebron (now southern West bank, Palestine).
People do forget the geographical proximity of Greece and Israel. H.P. Blavatsky went further showing, e.g., that nothing in the New Testament was “new” as we have established. Jesus preaches ideas and ethics taught exactly by Philo of Alexandria, the Pythagoreans and monastic Buddhism. The Christians also share a connection to the Odes of Solomon.
So, Jesus is used as a weapon against every other religion, knowing that many philosophers and Jewish mystics before Jesus, recount similar experiences of “Union with the Deity” and recorded them in their systems, psalms and poetry. The repeated verbiage that “no one comes to the Father except through Me,” sounds closer to the Gita and Upanishadic philosophy, than any Christian can bother to study. In Theosophy, Christos is synonymous with the Atman in Hindu philosophy, while Jesus is the mortal Chrestos (pure man in suffering) and adept. Perhaps knowing this, we may say that rather because of the lack of certain features such as forgiveness and atonement in the Odes, the view of Theosophy towards Christos is similar to the ancient Odists. The modern Theosophists reject the Nicene creed, which represents anti-gnostical Christianity.
Theosophists, if they are not individually Christian, view it as a mystically, deep psychological drama of initiation, that no mere wafer cracker and wine ritualism can provide; hence early Christian Hermeticist allusions to the Shepherd King and his “theosophical college.” The Mysteries is a science and has its origins. These origins conflict with the truth-claims the Christians set up, especially since it proves that the people of Galilee were influenced by a range of different religious ideas and systems (see Neil Godfrey, Evidence of a Pre-Christian Christos, 2015).
There is a great overlap between early Judaism, early Gnosticism and early Christianity Godfrey states (see more on early Christianity in They Lied About the First 100 Years of Christianity). The history we have to give is the history of many civilizations, many adepts, cults, systems and their schools, not one man and the dominance of one cult.
The books of the Bible are cleverly arranged for the construction of a new and ever-expanding imperial cult of “God’s dominion” for Jew and gentile, which it managed to achieve; and at the cost of the subordination of all religious-philosophical truth. Christianity develops as an obstruction to its followers’ interest in tracing pre-Christian Judean origins of redeemer figures (embodied as Wisdom, Logos and Heavenly Man), that are not quite Judean, but from Chaldea, Syria, Damascus, Tyre, Sidon and Antioch.
Rene Guenon had argued that the East did not have a philosophy of matter, as taught in Theosophy. Well, this was a blindspot. The Jewish philosophy rests on the doctrine of spirit and matter, according to Dunlap, and this dualism is the basis of the “entire oriental philosophy” from the Nile to India, even Africa, Assyria and Babylon. In the wisdom of the Jewish Mysteries lies this dualism, but the saga of rival twin-brothers (read Tragedy of Satan the Double-Headed Dragon) is an old one.
We also find this exact same idea of spirit and matter in the oldest school of Hindu philosophy, now extinct (see Tracing the Ancient Wisdom-Religion in Theosophy and Samkhya). The birthplace of the founder of that school named Kapila (600 BCE) is the same birthplace as Siddhartha Gautama.
It is not strange to arrive by way of this history at some point to the philosophy and origins of Magism in the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia. The psychological divisions created within the framework of the Orient versus the Occident fall to the ground, and occurred by certain processes, that did not always exist.
What also to make of pre-Christian Mesopotamian origins of the Christos? We can go from the history of the Nile to Lebanon learning about the connections and worships between the Jews, Transjordans and Philistines. The task of the typical Christian is to prove that their beliefs and dogmas are alone true. If he or she does not have faith in “Jesus Christ” as King and Messiah (with all his Typhonic and Setian characteristics), then their “faith” and entire religious mapping of the world falls to the ground. The things I learned along the way helped me to understand why modern interfaith does not work. The issue as you see is very complex. The Age of Faith is indeed over, and the times demands more of you to be learned in the ways of the ancient hierogrammates, odists, myth makers, and retainers of great memory and record. We need lovers of the ancients once more.
The American Minervan 
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