Tag: Comparative Religion
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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…
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David Reigle’s Analysis on legitimate Buddhist Esoteric Lineage in Theosophy: Great Madhyamaka and Samkhya
INTRODUCTION In David Reigle’s analysis when discussing the relation of Theosophy to Great Madhyamaka and the Samkhya school, he positions Theosophy as the contemporary manifestation of an ancient Wisdom Tradition, emphasizing its doctrinal coherence with esoteric Eastern systems, rather than eclectic borrowings. This distinction in defining Theosophy is key to future research, because standard definitions…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Noah Webster’s Influence on Early American Identity, Journalism and Education
Noah Webster, Adams and other early Americans emphasis on divergence from Britain demonstrates how Federalists sought to create early American identity through changes to institutions, language, and colonial education to legitimize the new republic. Mayflower descendant Noah Webster (1758-1843) is considered the father of American education and the American dictionary. Webster is accompanied by many…
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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…
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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…
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Racism, Freemasonry and fighting degeneration of American Politics
A situation I have absolutely no patience for is the condition esotericists everywhere find themselves in. What has been the main obstacle to simple propagation of Theosophy, without any elaborate spiritual explanation? This is gossip, instigation, inner conflict, mass paranoia (an intrinsic feature to American politics), pre-established religious conditioning, hoaxes and the flaws of human…
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Guenon, Theosophy and Perennialism: Decline of Guidance and Wisdom
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…
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Yevgeny Zamyatin on the Heretics of the World
“The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy.” —Yevgeny Zamyatin On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other Matters
The American Minervan 