Category: Comparative Religion
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Pan-Esotericism in Africa: Hermetic Roots and Bantu Spiritual Wisdom
The lengthy article in The Boston Courier of July 18, 1886, in which nearly seventy citizens of Nagapattinam in India penned a letter defending the existence of the Sadhus, of great initiates is a testament of the truth regarding the full ramifications of this elusive history of the mysteries. That people have held personal converse…
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Age of the Rule of Faith: Valerie Tarico on the Christian Emphasis on Right Belief vs Pagans and Eastern Religions
VALERIE TARICO IN THE CHRISTIAN DELUSION: WHY FAITH FAILS (PG 47-50) ON CHRISTIAN EXCLUSIVE TRUTH CLAIMS AND EMPHASIS ON RIGHT BELIEF This is related to Jan Assmann on monotheism as a cross-cultural impediment (The Construction of Monotheism) and is a diagnosis of the real consequences and limitations Christianity produced and imposed. As we have demonstrated…
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Big Think Asks ‘Has Science made Religion useless?’
DO WE STILL NEED RELIGION. Robert Sapolsky, Reza Aslan, Pete Holmes and others from Big Think answered the question, “Has science made religion useless?” So, has Science made religion useless?
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Theosophy, the Successor of Neoplatonism?
IN THE KEY TO THEOSOPHY, HELENA BLAVATSKY CALLS THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY THE MODERN SUCCESSOR OF THE NEOPLATONIC SCHOOL. This would have definitely come true, if only the Theosophical Movement managed to stay consistent a little longer into the twentieth century. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Neoplatonism in the first paragraph basically explains what…
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Bhagavan Das on the Evils Of Nationalism
Liberals used to be nationalists too, but these nationalists were also cosmopolitans, internationalists, patriotic, lovers of antiquity, who romanticized the Golden Ages of ancient civilizations. In our day, liberals have conceded to give these qualities alone to their adversaries, who exploit by perpetually putting into question their love for their country. Articles read Nationalism, or…
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Etruscan Visual Representations of the Birth of Athena and Minerva: A Comparative Study | Dr. Shanna Kennedy-Quigley
Dr. Shanna Kennedy-Quigley’s paper from the Etruscan Studies Journal on the Etruscan visual representations of the Birth of Athena and Minerva provides historical, artistic, and cultural perspective of its common use in imagery. The paper explains the significant differences in the Etruscan cultural attitudes toward women, from those of their Greek contemporaries. It examines Etruscan…
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The Septenary Principles of Man: Zurvanite Zoroastrian and Theosophical Classification
R. C. Zaehner, Zurvan. A Zoroastrian Dilemma, Oxford, 1955, pp. 323, 334) demonstrates, that the Zurvanite Zoroastrian (a now extinct school of thought) classification (referring to levels of being or existence) is near identical to the Tāraka Rāja Yoga classification. However, as the Theosophical [esoteric] classification show, that the septenary division of man is explained in…
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The Construction of Monotheism: Dever, Stavrakopoulou, LePage, Blavatsky and Others
Prof. William G. Dever (Archaeologist, Anthropologist,University of Arizona) says the Torah is a “Minority Report” “To understand Paul, we have to realize that in antiquity, all monotheists were polytheists by our modern definition. Everyone (…) acknowledged the existence of everybody else’s gods. Back then, not only were you born into cultic obligations to the gods of…
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Alan Watts: “Ecology and Religion”
Alan Watts on the limited symbolic ideas about God affecting human behavior, the problem of the paternalistic concept of God, the feminine property in Eastern metaphysics, and the self-contradiction of the idea that real power is force. Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was a British-born philosopher, writer, and speaker, best…
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G. de Purucker’s Introduction to the Esoteric Tradition: The Word “Dogma”
G. de Purucker in his introduction of the Esoteric Tradition (1940) explains the meaning of Theosophy being non-dogmatic. DOGMA IN THE ESOTERIC TRADITION BY G. DE PURUCKER “The word dogma comes from the Greek verb dokein, “to seem to be,” “to appear to be.” A dogma, therefore, was something which appeared to be a truth: an…
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John Adams Letter to the Officers of the First Brigade: Constitution, Morality and Religion
John Adams states, ‘the American Constitution is meant for a religious and moral people,’ which is distinctly different from the claim that ‘America is a Christian nation.’ The full context of the oft quoted passage makes this abundantly clear. John Adams abhorred slavery. The conception of a race-based U.S. republic — built on the slavish…
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John Adams on Religion in the United States, Quakers, Jesuitism, and Machiavellianism
The words of John Adams, second President of the United States (1797–1801) and the first Vice President (1789–97) on Religion in the United States, Quakers, Jesuitism, and Machiavellianism. “The substance and essence of Christianity, as I understand it, is eternal and unchangeable, and will bear examination forever, but it has been mixed with extraneous ingredients,…
The American Minervan 