Tag: Comparative Religion
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Theosophy in Star Wars: The Force, Its Sides and the “Two Paths”
TWO CENTRAL CONCEPTS IN STAR WARS AND THEOSOPHY: THE FORCE AND THE TWO PATHS There is no coincidence to the fact, there are similarities between Star Wars and Theosophy. The former is a fictional universe, but the latter is an actual high philosophical collection of teachings and ethical codes. In no other school of thought…
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John Tavener: “Mother and Child”
“Mother and Child” “Hail Maria, Hail Sophia…” Hail Nature, Hail Spirit, Wisdom of God, Soul of the World.
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“I Dread The Appearance In Print Of Our Philosophy” | The Mahatma Letter No. 56
“By most of your gold worshipping countrymen our facts and theorems would be denominated fancy-flights, the dreams of madmen.” The Occult Philosophy taught to the Theosophists does not belong to them, but to the men, that were teachers to H.P.B. There has been much disrespectful misrepresentation and abuse of that philosophy which has devalued perception…
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Pseudo-Theosophy and Pseudo-Messiahs: Imitations of Theosophy
Helena Blavatsky is sometimes referred to as the “Mother of the New Age” movement. This is not only untrue, but also not the compliment those that argue this to define her legacy seem to think it is. It can be strongly demonstrated that H.P. Blavatsky would have critiqued the New Age movement more harshly than…
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The Limitations of Tolerance to all Religions | Sophia Wadia
Against the policy of “live and let live” in religious pluralism and interfaith “It is the duty of esoteric students to unmask error and hypocrisy; to face lie with truth; not as personal criticisms but as facts against mis statements (…) Theosophy is in the world for that purpose. We are not to be self-assertive nor…
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Lewis Loflin’s “Debunking Theosophy”
Lewis Loflin’s Debunking Theosophy and Psychological Manipulation and Society (Joseph P. Szimhart’s review) are two critiques of the Theosophical Society, high in the index. The link is there to review. A common criticism in religious and historical research on Modern Theosophy — since its first expositions in Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism — is that Theosophy is a “hyper-syncretistic religion.”…
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Blavatsky’s Interpretation of the Tree of Life and Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
“Were it light alone, inactive and absolute, the human mind could not appreciate nor even realise it (…) According to the views of the Gnostics, these two principles are immutable Light and Shadow, Good and Evil being virtually one and having existed through all eternity, as they will ever continue to exist so long as…
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Alan Watts on American Spiritual Settler Movements: ‘Why America is a Republic and not a Monarchy’
“So, the point is that the ruach is the divine, in the creature, by virtue of which you are sons of, (or of) the nature of God (manifestations of the divine). This discovery is the Gospel, is the good news; but this has been perpetually repressed throughout the history of Western religion; because all Western…
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Alexander Wilder on Pagans and the Value of the Classical Religions
Limited Knowledge of Religion in Antiquity The term Pagan, or paganus originally meant, an inhabitant of the village, or a peasant, but came to refer to perverted heretical and heterodox beliefs outside of the theology of the Catholic Church. Therefore, what is considered perverted must come from the devil, hence, idolatrous and pagan. The Jews, Christians,…
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Gottfried De Purucker defines Religion in “Occult Glossary”
What does it mean, when we use the broad term religion? Gottfried de Purucker† (1874-1942), who was head of the Pasadena Theosophical Society from 1929-1942, had a good definition in his Occult Glossary (1933). It follows on pages 148-9: “Religion. An operation of the human spiritual mind in its endeavor to understand not only the how and the why of…
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Survival of Post-Christian Successors to the Mysteries
“Thus it is not Judaism and Christianity that remodelled the ancient Pagan Wisdom, but rather the latter that put its heathen curb, quietly and insensibly, on the new faith; and this, moreover, was still further influenced by the Eclectic Theosophical system, the direct emanation of the Wisdom-Religion. All that is grand and noble in Christian…
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The Different Aspects of Zeus in Greek Mythology: Is Zeus the Highest God?
“These fairy tales are not senseless stories written for the amusement of the idle; they embody the profound religion of our forefathers(…)” (W.S.W. Anson, Asgard and the Gods: Tales and Traditions of our Northern Ancestors) “For a myth, in Greek [[mythos]], means oral tradition, passed from mouth to mouth from one generation to the other; and…