The American Minervan

Tag: India

  • William Q. Judge on the Decline of Modern India

    William Q. Judge on the Decline of Modern India

    Interestingly, William Q. Judge was hopeful for a New Era of Philosophical Renaissance in the West through the Theosophical Movement, and foresaw a high influence (or intrusion) from India he called the “Yogi craze” entering the West. Judge might have believed, that his vision of Theosophy could curtail this current of false gurus from European…

  • Blavatsky’s Russian Travel Writings on Racism and Colonialism in India, 2 of 3

    Blavatsky’s Russian Travel Writings on Racism and Colonialism in India, 2 of 3

    FROM THE DURBAR IN LAHORE, CHAPTER II H.P. Blavatsky calls the attitudes between the English and Indians, that of two blind men. “In India, wherever two Englishmen meet, complaints about the “fiendish ingratitude of the black devils” are soon heard and wherever two natives encounter each other, complaints about the “dark intentions of the white oppressors” will…

  • Kumari Jayawardena: “The White Woman’s Other Burden.” Blavatsky and Emancipation in South Asia

    Kumari Jayawardena: “The White Woman’s Other Burden.” Blavatsky and Emancipation in South Asia

    From the outset, Kumari Jayawardena’s “The White Woman’s Other Burden” (1995) demonstrates, theosophy emphasized the absence of any distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or color in its theory and practice; and gender equality was therefore, one of its distinctive features. The 1995 work of Jayawardena details the roles and activities of foreign women in…

  • Before the Conversion: Helena Blavatsky on Shakyamuni Buddha and Buddhism

    Before the Conversion: Helena Blavatsky on Shakyamuni Buddha and Buddhism

    The nineteenth-century saw its first public Western converts to Buddhism, or this is how it is usually defined in books. Although Helena P. Blavatsky cannot be described as a “Western convert,” H.P.B. and Henry S. Olcott, an American lawyer who worked on U.S. President Lincoln’s assassination case, were the two leading movers of the Theosophical…

  • “Time destroys the speculations of man” – William James, 1907

    “Time destroys the speculations of man” – William James, 1907

    “I fully expect to see the pragmatist view of truth run through the classic stages of a theory’s career. First, you know, a new theory is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves…

  • Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge: ‘Though They Are Gods, Still They Are Not To Be Worshiped’

    Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge: ‘Though They Are Gods, Still They Are Not To Be Worshiped’

    “I say there are many gods, but one God of all these gods, incomprehensible and unknown to all (…) a Power of immeasurable and ineffable Light, whose greatness is held to be incomprehensible, a Tower which the maker of the world does not know.” (Simon Magus, Clemens Recognitiones from the Clementine Literature) “They boast ethereal vigour and…