Category: Comparative Religion
-
Theosophy, Pre-Socratic Monism and Cosmology in relation to Abrahamic Monotheistic Claims
Within the Theosophical framework, as articulated by H.P. Blavatsky and in David Reigle’s analyses of an ancient, pre-Vedic Wisdom Tradition, the Pre-Socratic sages such as Thales, Anaximander, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Pythagoras (often included in this group) are regarded as pivotal figures who birthed Western civilization and philosophy by drawing from a primordial, universal esoteric…
-
Theosophy and the Wisdom Tradition according to David Reigle
Theosophy is portrayed as the modern expression of an ancient, non-dual and non-theistic universal Wisdom Tradition, that predated all known religions and serves as their primordial source. This tradition, once universally diffused, fragmented into exoteric religions particularly under priestcraft and conventionalists, but was preserved in esoteric schools through oral and initiatory dissemination of knowledge, particularly…
-
Jewish Kabbalah and Hindu Account of the Origin of the Universe: Cosmological Notes
INTRODUCTION This article aims to demonstrate a fundamental unity of ancient esoteric wisdom traditions by comparing Hindu cosmogony with Jewish cosmogony in addition to correcting certain ideas about shared geometric symbolism. These systems are not oppositional but “two leaves on the same stem,” sharing an identical esoteric core that originates from a primordial universal secret…
-
Chain of Transmission of Ancient Wisdom in the Writings of Helena Blavatsky
It was proposed in her earlier works like Isis Unveiled that the transmission of ancient wisdom or cultural influences originating in India passed through Egypt and/or Chaldea (ancient Babylonia in southern Mesopotamia), and then extending to ancient Greece and Jewish traditions. This was central in early Theosophical frameworks in books such as later in The…
-
Rhineland Pietists to Mishnaic Period: Medieval and Pre-Medieval Transmission of Jewish Esoteric Traditions
ORAL AND INITIATORY Tannaitic and Amoraic periods to the German Pietists. Consider all the well-known lines in Jewish and Christian sacred literature about knowledge for the public and knowledge restricted to the initiated few. RHINELAND PIETISTS, HASIDEI ASHKENAZ INSPIRES 17TH CENTURY GERMAN PIETIST MOVEMENT ⑇ The German Pietists in the 17th to 18th century owe…
-
From Nabta Playa to the Osirian Mysteries: Africa’s Claim to the Primordial Wisdom Tradition
How nineteenth-century esotericists ignored Africa’s ancient Wisdom Traditions, limiting their focus to Biblical interpretations, which expanded into understanding Indo-Iranian roots. INTRODUCTION The concept of a single primordial Wisdom Tradition, or even just the origins of “Holy Wisdom” as it was constituted in Western religious and philosophical literature (particularly in the nineteenth-century, to the medieval Alchemists…
-
Investigating Jamal al-Din’s influence on Noble Drew Ali and Black American New Religious Movements
INTRODUCTION ON BLACK AMERICAN RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE FROM NEW WORLD TO NEW THOUGHT In a recent article about the concept of “Divine Messengers” in Islam and Theosophy, one of the key points I wanted to guide you into considering there are many influences that underlie modern understandings of religion, esotericism and theological study in the West,…
-
Islam and Theosophy: Are Jesus and Buddha “Divine Messengers?”
Are Jesus and Buddha “Divine Messengers?” (Two-Fold Answer): The concept of the lineage of Prophetic Wisdom and Divine (or Spiritual Messengers) is a concept I came to when studying the history of both Manichaeism and Islam. This is not an odd thing to hear among Muslims. Some simply mention to me, that traditionally, there are…
-
Lovers of the Ancients, or Christian Dogmatic claims to Truth
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…
-
Alice Bailey’s Alleged Tibetan Buddhist Source and Political Idealism
INTRODUCTION: THE LERNAEAN HYDRA OF RELIGIOUS POLITICAL CONSPIRACIES Christians that use Alice A. Bailey (born Alice La Trobe-Bateman) to attack Theosophy prove to believe in the ideas of Alice Bailey far more than we Theosophists do. If they did not, then Christians would help Theosophists demarcate the great differences — and who are engaged in…
-
Christian Truth, or the eclectic Theosophical System
Every effort to help the West has failed and faced trials, each falling into the same patterns of individual and organizational turmoil, blame and mythologizing an adversary. So, what is this effort that the modern Theosophical Movement represents to “the West”? It is important to challenge our notions of “the West” as I explained in…
The American Minervan 