Theos-Talk Archives (January 2002 Message tt00304)

Brigitte: "The first appearance was in "Portae
Lucis"1516, on the title page a seated man is shown
holding a tree with the ten sephirot.

I have seen the picture but did not remember the
source. The idea of the sephiroth can be found in the
Zohar, which is centuries older, and hints of it can
be found in Irenaeus, who wrote circa 175 C.E. It is
likely that the idea was known for at least two
centuries before Irenaeus.

Brigitte: "Blavatsky's Globes correspond with the
Sephiroth, and her planes are identical with those on
the Tree of Life. All she did was to rearrange their
positions so that they are circular or chain?like.

True, but my point was, there was such a long time
between the original formulation of this idea and the
"tree of life" diagram that a circular structure is
probably as valid an interpretation as the angular
one.

Brigitte: "The Kabbala (I never know what the real
spelling is in english, Blavatsky spmethimes wrote
Cabalah, so I often chance spelling), contains 
elements of both Gnosticism and Neo?platonism

That is because the Kabala originated out of Jewish
Gnosticism, which was the origin also of Christian
Gnosticism. Such is Gershom Scholem's thesis, anyway.
The ancient origin of Kabalism can be found in the
Yetzirah and Merkabah systems of Jewish meditation.

Brigitte: "esotericists in the Renaisance tought that 
the Kabbala was the ancient wisdom religion of the
world, and wich explains maybe why Blavatsky believed
this also

That could be true. Isis was intended as a rewrite of
Godfrey Higgins' Anaclypsis, and Higgins has
Blavatsky's "primitive wisdom religion" hypothesis in
it in the same terms as Blavatsky wrote it later, so
this would seem a more immediate source of inspiration
than a book which would have been quite rare and hard
to find. Also Wilder, who mentioned Ammonius Saccas'
idea that the PWR existed in ancient Alexandria. 
Higgins also wrote about the Hindu kalpa theory. It
would be hard for me to believe that Higgins was not
the inspiration for much of this.

I have argued that the PWR idea was resuscitated in
the 19th century because of William Jones' discovery,
published in 1785, that Sanskrit was related
linguistically to the European languages. That
suggests Indian and European peoples may have
originated from one stock in ancient times, and that
Indian and European cultures derived from a common
source (including religions.) I am not saying Jones
was right or wrong, but you can see how the PWR idea
would have been resuscitated as a direct result of his
theories. That seems to clearly mark the whole system
as a product of the nineteenth century.

That idea by the way is anathema to Theosophical
Fundamentalists, who insist there is a book in India
which is made of ordinary palm leaf, and which is
millions and millions of years old, despite the fact
that palm leaf manuscripts only last 150 years, and
that it was written by a divine being, etc., etc. 
These are the same people who insist that it rained in
Olcott's apartment. If somebody said it, then they
say it must be true, unless they don't believe it,
which is a prima facie case that it is nonsense, but
not otherwise, or whatever. I don't understand them.

Brigitte: "she included the basic Kaballistic
structure in the "Secret Doctrine". 

That she did. She admitted as much and there is no
reasonable question about it.

Brigitte: "Blavatsky ... was able to include much more
... material, all coming together in a synthetic
universalism that is unique for its time.

Ne careful. Someone once pointed out that I was a
heretic for saying that the SD was a synthesis. Not
realizing I was walking into a trap, I naively replied
that "if the author puts it on the title page that the
book is a synthesis, and says in the text that it is a
synthesis, and internal evidence in the book itself
indicates it is a synthesis, I feel compelled to say
that it is a synthesis." A firestorm resulted in
which the Theosophical Fundamentalists made it clear
that to them it is NOT a synthesis, and they don't
care WHAT the author said, even though at the same
time they insist she was infallible when she said
something they like. Go figure.

Brigitte: "There is however a suspicion expressed by
not least Brendan French in his thesis about the
Masters, that Blavatsky added only oriental terms and
fragments in order to emphasise the universalist
aspirations of her work.

I think he is wrong. The hypothesis from which she
worked was that all modern religions originated in
India, with the ancestors of the Indian and European
peoples. The current Europeans migrated from India
thousands of years ago, bringing their original Indian
culture with them. This idea was justified by the
aforementioned Jones discovery about Sanskrit. She
claimed furthermore that modern religions were all
garbage, but that the ancient root of them was the
real deal. When she arrived in New York in 1874 the
first thing she said to a reporter was "I have been in
Tibet." However ill informed she may have been, I
think she was Eastern oriented from 1874 at least.

Brigitte: "The person who is said to planted the idea
in Blavatsky's ear to write a new synthesis in the
form of Isis was Sotheran

You probably know the original title of the book was
"Skeleton Keys to Mysterious Gates." It was intended
to be a rewrite of Anaclypsis and a text book for her
school in New York. That is why it was just thrown
together the way it was. It was an anthology of stuff
she read.

Brigitte: "Blavatsky explained Boehme's metaphysics
by claiming that he was a reincarnation ...

In the SD she says he was a "nursling of the
nirnanakayas."

Brigitte: "But wasn this basic structure of
Blavatskyan Theosophy already implied in the Mahatma
letters, or would you say that during she was in
correspondence with Yarker in India, and 
during the New York days when she received rights to
administer degrees of the Sat B'aih that had as its
higher degrees the Royal Order of Sikha

I don't understand the question, but I don't think her
stuff was primarily Sikh in character, more Hindu and
Buddhist.

Brigitte: "Blavatsky is known to have put a circle
(snake biting itself in the tail) around the Swastika

The snake is a Gnostic symbol and the swastika is
Indian, so this suggests to me a symbolic
representation of the synthetic character of her
system.

Thee is no question that she was familiar with the GD,
but I do not recall whether she required EST members
to stay out of the GD or not. I know Besant did that
later in time.

Steve

--- bri_mue <bri_mue@yahoo.com> wrote:
> The first appearance was in "Portae Lucis"1516, on
> the title
> page a seated man is shown holding a tree with the
> ten sephirot.
> Blavatsky's Globes correspond with the Sephiroth,
> and her planes
> are identical with those on the Tree of Life. All
> she did was to re-
> arrange their positions so that they are circular or
> chain-like .
> Giordano Bruno's De monade is is intertwined with
> the
> Renaissance literature of the "christian kabbalah
> which was 
> widespread in 16th century thought. Renaissance 
> representatives of the christian kabbalah are Pico
> della Mirandola, 
> Johannes Reuchlin, Cornelius Agrippa or Guillaume
> Postel.
> 
> 
> The Kabbala (I never know what the real spelling is
> in english, 
> Blavatsky spmethimes wrote Cabalah, so I often
> chance spelling), 
> contains elements of both Gnosticism and
> Neo-platonism, and was 
> concerned with the nature and structure of all
> creation from the 
> divine to the material worlds. Western or Christian
> Kabbalism grew 
> from German and Lurianic Kabbalism. According to
> the bible wich was 
> believed to be historical fact esotericists in the
> Renaisance tought 
> that the Kabbala was the ancient wisdom religion of
> the world, and 
> wich explains maybe why Blavatsky believed this
> also, so that she 
> included the basic Kaballistic structure in the 
> "Secret
> Doctrine". 
> 
> However these "roots" of Blavatskyan Theosophy are
> similar
> to what earlier Theosophists, before Blavatsky,
> from Jacob Boehme 
> to Swedenborg also used. And is off course an
> historical error, but 
> allows us to trace the source of Blavatskyan
> Theosophy.
> In fact the belief in an "Ancient Wisdom Tradition"
> was a
> very popular in Renaisance Europe. The first to
> make an attempt to 
> write a large book about it was Giovanni Pico della
> Mirandola, 1463 - 
> 1494 ,Syncretism in the West: Pico's 900 Theses
> (1486) (see: 
>
http://www.safarmer.com/pico/fractalcosmologies.html)
> 
> Blavatsky according to what was available in the
> 19th century versus 
> to Pico in the 15th, was able to include much more,
> and thus we see 
> Indian kalpa theory and Kabbalistic aeonic
> configurations, 
> Rosicrucian material, all coming together in a 
> synthetic 
> universalism that is unique for its time. But
> although from the 
> beginning Indic materialswhere included in her work
> the vocabulary 
> of this was already available from classical models
> of time and 
> history, such as those of Hesiod (c. 750 B.C.E.) and
> Aristotle (384-
> 355 B.C.E.), or from the expansive visions of 
> Boehme and Swedenborg 
> or P.B.Randolph who alledgedly had studied in the
> east.
> There is however a suspicion expressed by not least
> Brendan French 
> in his thesis about the Masters, that Blavatsky
> added only oriental 
> terms and fragments in order to emphasise the
> universalist 
> aspirations of her work.
> 
> The person who is said to planted the idea in
> Blavatsky's ear to 
> write a new synthesis in the form of Isis was
> Sotheran, who at least 
> in one newspaper report of the time is claimed to be
> the real K.H..
> The Lurianic Kabbalists used a mediational 
> technique to travel to 
> the Lower World to rescue the divine sparks and 
> bring them to the 
> Upper World. God's exiled light was being brought
> together with
> its source, the snake bites itself in the tail. And
> that is what is 
> contained in Blavatsky's circular or chain-like
> structure.
> I think she got this idea from Boehme who employed
> the model of a 
> clockwork ("Uhrwerk") as a metaphor for progression
> through harmony. 
> Blavatsky explained Boehme's metaphysics by
> claiming that he was a 
> reincarnation "of one, who, in a previous birth, had
> attained through 
> extreme purity of life and efforts in the right
> direction almost to a 
> Yogistate of holiness and saintship": Blavatsky,
> Collected Writings, 
> vol. XII, 371-372.
> 
> But wasn this basic structure of Blavatskyan
> Theosophy already 
> implied in the Mahatma letters, or would you say
> that during she was 
> in correspondence with Yarker in India, and during
> the New York days 
> when she received rights to administer degrees of
> the Sat B'aih that 
> had as its higher degrees the Royal Order of Sikha,
> that there 
> already where influences of Wynn Westcot and the
> like, along with 
> P.B. Randolph ?
> 
> Joscelyn Godwinn makes certain hints about that and
> I reffered to it 
> briefly by bringing in E.H.Britten who was working
> long before 
> already as a scryer for ... from the Royal Order of
> the Swastika and 
> Blavatsky is known to have put a circle (snake
> biting itself in the 
> tail) around the Swastika where we have this
> circular motive that we 
> discussed lay at the foundation of Blavatsky's
> cosmology. Although 
> this could also be "The Ring Pass-not is at the
> circumstance of the 
> manifested Universe" about wich she tought her
> students in London 
> Sept.10,1890.
> 
> Spierenburgs publication of "The Inner Group
> Teachings of 
> H.P.Blavatsky"(1985) that has on p. 130 the
> meditation diagram that 
> you earlier referred to, also agknowledges at the
> beginning on p.x :
> "The Golden Dawn'.H.P.B. maintained relations with
> it; several 
> members of her 'Lodge' were also members of the
> 'Golden Dawn' and 
> vice versa."
> 
> William Wynn Westcott (1848-1925), appears to have
> been admitted 
> honoris causa, and received copies of all
> correspondence. The Inner 
> Group members were encouraged to identify
> themselves, psychically and 
> physically, with the Master, by engaging their
> creative imagination.
> Wynn Westcott contributed much to "The Theosophical
> Glossary" of 1892.
> 
> 
> Brigitte
> 
> PS Yarker in his letter to Blavatsky in India on
> January 2, 1878, 
> gives Blavatsky instructions about coming to see him
> (all the way via 
> London or Liverpool to his own Channel Island home,
> something 
> Blavatsky in her previous letter from India, must
> have asked him for) 
> Yarker also mentioned: Sometime when you see
> Hyneman, will you ask 
> him who was the Piat mentioned in some of Marconis'
> letters. Piot 
> published a diagram of the degree of Master of
> Masters from the 
> symbolic 'Orient of Memphis' in 1876--- are they the
> same man? I am 
> obliged to Hyneman for the good opinion which you
> say he holds of
> me."
> 
> Anybody in this group has more information about 
> Hyneman , or 
> would this be a nick name for Hartmann ? 
> 
> 
=== message truncated ===


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